


THE NEW CANAAN RUN

by femmefan1946



Category: Firefly
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-25
Updated: 2015-07-25
Packaged: 2018-04-11 02:07:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 48,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4416917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/femmefan1946/pseuds/femmefan1946
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In 2529, having met up with one of Zoe's brothers, Perseus Alleyne, the Serenity crew including their spouses and children, take a long term contract with his employers, Business Solutions Unlimited, following the New Canaan Run trading route.</p>
            </blockquote>





	THE NEW CANAAN RUN

**Author's Note:**

> Emma Washburne was born in 2518. See that canon story in the comic book "Leaves on the Wind."  
> And this is how I see the story continuing.  
> Kaylee's hot romance with Simon burned out. Simon came out in 2519.  
> Kaylee and Mal married in 2520, they have two children, Derrial born 2521 and BabyGirl born 2528.  
> David Commanda Chen joined the crew in 2526. He is romantically involved with Simon. Both work for the Federal Flying Doctors.  
> Inara died in 2528.
> 
> A copy of the canon books 'Serenity Blueprints Pack' and 'Atlas of the 'Verse Volume I' as well as the "Map of the 'Verse' may be useful from time to time.

THE NEW CANAAN RUN  
http://www.firefly-objectsinspace.com/map-borderworlds.html

 

2529 C.E.  
Twelve years after Miranda. 

 

PERSEPHONE 

Insystem: Raw bulk salt from Persephone to Renao Moon. Bulky and low value. Inland bound for a food processing factory (not Blue Moon)  
Outbound from Renao- Processed salt for Ramses Ahaj on Persephone.

TIME:  
Persephone to Renao Moon: Overnight  
Persphone to Beaumonde/Hastur Moon: Nine weeks  
Hastur Moon to Beaumonde: Overnight

'What's the route?'  
'It's the Traders' Guild New Canaan Run. Pretty straight forward, a few side trips to moons to pick up or drop off, all pre-arranged, all legal. The full run takes sixty-three weeks , are you sure you want to take all the kids with you?' asked Perseus Alleyne.  
'For a kid that's a lifetime, and BabyGirl is still nursing,' Kaylee pointed out ' If she don't go, I don't go. An you'll hafta find a mechanic.'  
'But Emma and Derry are in school. They could live here, not miss any classtime.'  
'We're takin the kids,' said Mal. 'No point in havin a family if they're never around.'  
'That's the way of it , brother.' said Zoe.  
'All right. there are no dangerous cargoes set up , unless you pick up anything on your way. Strictly legal.’  
'Legal's good with kids aboard. You still okay with us doing some side work as we go?  
'The company has to come first, every time.'  
'Goes without sayin.'  
'And if you get pinched for any other cargo, you're on your own.'  
'Again, kids on board. We ain't takin chances.'  
'I can spot you credit if you find a good deal along the way. That's personal credit, not company.'  
'We got some cashy money put aside, reckon to use that first. Cash goes further than credit sometimes.'  
'Less traceable too.'  
'Yeah. Here's what we do need. We got a fair stake in Alliance scrip. We've been changing it for coin, but the bankers watch that. You got a stash of legal-type coin that you can change for legal scrip?'  
'My goodness, Mal. You'd think you don't want to carry money with tracing and tracking built in,' Perse smiled.  
Mal smiled back, thinly.'What can I say, Perse. I'm taken up coin collectin as a hobby. I even like the old Independent coin.'  
'I actually have a fair bid of Rim coin. And mostly platinum and gold.'  
'Works.'  
￼

 

FIRST LEG  
PERSEPHONE TO RENAO  
Persephone to Renao Moon: Overnight  
Outbound from Renao- Raw bulk salt from Renao Moon. Bulky and low value. Inland bound for a food processing factory (not Blue Moon)

 

The first part of the New Canaan Run turned out to be a shuttle job from Persephone's Renao Moon, bringing raw salt from Renao's oceans to Ramses Aghaj.  
The cargo hold was brimful of sacks, up to the catwalks.  
'Just be sure to keep it dry,' warned the warehouse manager,'We'd be unhappy about any short weight.'  
'Don't worry, ' said Kaylee, 'I don't wan my girl corrodin' away from salt poisoning.'  
There was only one problem on the run, when Emma, River and Derry were playing on the salt stacks. Derry slipped and feel five metres to the metal floor of the bay tearing a sack in the process. Simon insisted on a full concussion protocol and his father made him sweep up the spilled salt.  
His mother was distraught, unsure whether the potential damage to her son was more important than the potential damage to Serenity.  
The raw salt cargo was delivered to Persephone's Nemecek Docks, the closest ones to Ramses Ahaj where there was a processing plant that was not part of the Blue Sun corporate conglomerate, The plant paid more for cargo than Blue Sun would, than Blue Sun had to, and which purchased smaller quantities.  
Dried algae from Beaumonde was loaded for delivery to Silverhold where it would be processed into protein bars for travellers and homesteaders.  
Then purified salt, along with industrial chemicals that were a valuable byproduct of the refining, were loaded, in waterproof unbreakable celluloid boxes for shipping, on the first real leg of the New Canaan Run. 

 

￼

SECOND LEG  
BEAUMONDE/ HASTUR'S MOON  
Persphone to Beaumonde/Hastur Moon: Nine weeks  
Inbound cargo : Semi-processed salt for Ramses Ahaj on Persephone. Dried algae bound for processing plants on Silverhold.

Outbound cargo- dried algae for Silverhold  
\--refined salt, gold, platinum, lithium

Emma was excited about the third leg of the New Canaan Run, but her mother dreaded it.  
The crew have visited Beaumonde fairly often. On such a busy manufacturing centre, it was easy for small ships to get overlooked and for cargoes that had questionable provenance to be bought and sold.  
Beaumonde was also second only to Dyton Colony for the manufacture of counterfeit goods, the main difference being that the little craftsmen of Dyton Colony was known for excellent copies, even improving on the originals, while Beaumonde paid much less attention to quality control. Only Dyton Colony's criminal heritage, originally settled as a prison planet, held it back from realizing an honoured place as a manufacturer.  
'Beaumonde products are dangerous,' Simon told Kaylee, 'People buy them for the low price without realizing that not just the brand labels are faked, so are the safety inspection labels. We had a horrible case at MedAcad. A stockman had ordered cheap batteries for one of the diagnostic machines and when it powered up, it exploded, killing the patient inside.'  
'Geez.'  
'The stockman though he was going to get a commendation for finding such a good deal. Those batteries are very expensive,normally a few hundred each. Instead he got fired and just missed getting prosecuted.  
'And the hospital had to replace the diagnostician which was nearly twenty thousand and pay compensation to the family.'  
'I guess we'll all be goin to Hastur Moon for Emma and Zoe,' Kaylee said.  
'Why?'  
'It as Wash' home world. He hated it. Sky so polluted he never saw the stars. He said he become a pilot just for that.'  
'Well, that will be nice for Emma to meet her grandparents? Or cousins?'  
'Zoe doesn't seem too happy. She says Wash was the only one in the family with a sense of humour'  
'Zoe?Our stone-faced warrior?'  
'I think she meant something else. She and Wash stopped there once, fore I joined the crew, an I gather it did not go well.'

Kaylee had gathered right.

C.E. 2512

Zoe watched as the shock on the faces of her new in-laws turned to anger and disgust.  
'Somethin you forget to tell me, husband?' she said.  
'No, I think I've introduced you to everyone. Mom, Dad, one sister , two brothers, Memaw. That's the lot.'  
Memaw, Wash' grandmother, peered up at the the tall woman. 'What's this doin here? We don't need no coloured round here.'  
Wash' father spoke, 'Hoban sez he married it.'  
'Why? You can hire better at the Sugar Sally, ' sneered a brother.  
'Zoe, my WIFE, is the First Mate on the spaceship I pilot, SHE's a decorated war veteran and the most extraordinary, beautiful and intelligent WOMAN I've ever met.' sotto voce, ' And she can kill any of you with her pinky; which I am thinking might be a good idea.'  
'You ain't married to that here.' said his father,'There's laws.'  
'No there ain't. Not since the Alliance took control of the government. Our marriage is a legal here as on Beaumonde or Londinium or even Ariel.'  
'What's Ariel?' asked a child's voice. His mother hushed him.  
'Go back to your room. Ain't nowhere.'  
'That lady's pretty,' the small boy said. His mother, Wash's sister, slapped him.'Your bed, now! And no dinner!'  
'Well, I've enjoyed all the sweetness and light of our visit. Lovely to see you all again. Not so great to hear you spewing up the vitriol an all. We'll send a Christmas card and of course we expect to provide at least half a dozen birth announcements as time goes on.  
Wash grabbed Zoe's arm and marched out of the cramped house. He glanced back.  
The front door was firmly shut behind them, but in an upstairs window a blonde head peered out, blue eyes round with wonder. 

Wash waved at his nephew and smiled. Zoe look up to see the boy and blew him a kiss. He caught it and laughing rubbed it on his face.  
'One down, ' said Wash 'Not just the air that's filthy here. You okay, sweetheart?'  
'Stunned. That ain't nothing I've ever seen before. What were they objectin to?'

2529 C.E.  
There had been no Christmas cards and , what with the hospital and the prison and all, Emma's birth announcement had also gone by the board.  
But Emma had met her Uncle Acibides' family, who were all adults, and Kaylee's nephews and nieces , a torrent of kids fromm newborn to Academy age, who amused and terrorized their home town on ……….. Redheaded BabyGirl fit in with the toddlers and Derry was welcomed as a leader by his age cohort whenever they were dirtside.  
Emma was accepted as family by the Fryes and hung with a quiet studious group of girls who were never suspected as the brains behind outrageous pranks like the flaming haybales that rolled downhill one clear stray night from the Frye homestead, stopping just in front of the church.  
'It was stopping it exactly there that was the hard part, Aunt River, Thank you for confirming our maths.'  
'I burn the haybale at both ends  
It will not last the night  
But oh my friends and ah my foes  
It makes a lovely light. ' River grinned. 

Knowing such good family times, Emma had become anxious to meet her legendary father's family. 

'Seven hundred years of hatefulness. Hard to figure anyone could hold on that long.' Kaylee said.

'Religions do. Christians been around for twenty five hundred, Buddhists for three thousand, Mithrans bout the same.' Zoe said.' Guess if you want to be special you can find others who wanna be special too.'  
'But because you have brown skin? That's stupid, your daddy was as blond as Wash. My Granny Lee could've stepped out of an old Hong Kong action flick.  
'David's real proud of his Algonquin ancestors and his family on Turtle Island Moon keep their old Longhouse traditions.  
Maybe it's because the Chens are respected. They sent all the kids to Academy and they all got qualifications. Wash' famly,,,'  
'Kinda hard to know your tradition is trailer trash.'  
'Zoe!'  
'Lotta truthiness in that though. They all work, but Wash said they thought he was nuts to want to leave Hastur Moon and the salt factory.'  
'Want me and the captn to come with?'  
'No. We'll face them ourselves. Maybe the kids will be okay.'

Emma was bouncing with excitement as they approached the cluster of prefab houses with the Washburne name on the mailbox. The front yard was decorated with flagpoles with an Alliance flagand two banners one red, with a diagonal white cross printed with blue stars and another in red and black centred by the Buddhist symbol of good luck. Less decorative wre the remnants of various land vehicles parked, permanently and rotting in the harsh atmosphere of the industrial moon.  
Two small girls were playing tea parties in the cab of one of these a goggled, eyes round, as they approached.  
'I'm looking for Hoban Washburne and his wife. Could you girls tell him Hoban Junior's widow's here to see them?' The girls didn't move.  
A boy, perhaps eighteen, with blond spiky hair that twisted Zoe's heart, came out on the porch. 'Teenie, Myonee, get Gramps and Gran, quick now!' The girls ran back to a house two doors down.  
'I remember you, ' the boy said.'YOu came the Uncle Hobie when I was real little. I thought you were pretty. But you're really beautiful.'  
'Umm. Thank you.'  
'Did I say that out loud?' he had the same grin as his uncle too. Zoe had to fight back tears.  
'This is Emma. She's Wash,… Hoban Junior's daughter. Born after… after he was killed.'  
Hi, Emma, I guess we're cousins. My name is Hosea Washburne Biddlington. Call me Burne, please, please call me Burne.' That goofy grin again. 

￼

EMMA WASHBURNE

Emma stepped forward and offered her hand to her cousin. She shook it solemnly.  
'You're about eleven, then? You'll be writing your Six soon, I guess.'  
Emma said proudly, 'I passed my Six last year. Uncle Simon thinks I'll write may Twelve by the time I'm fourteen.'  
'I'm suppose the write my Twelve this year, but then I'm supposed to get work and help the family.'

The little girls came running back, followed more slowly by an older couple. Both were blonde and blue-eyed, a rarity in a Verse where the dominant brown eye genes were widespread.  
They did not look happy to see Zoe, tall and straight in her brown leather duster, and when Burne turned, revealing her fair-haired daughter their faces turned to stone.

Zoe sighed. 'Mr, and Mrs. Washburne, we met some time back when my Wash brought me to to be introduced. I'm Zoe Washburne and this is our girl Emma Washburne.'  
The older couple were both stooped and frail, but their glare was as firry as the flares that like Hastur Moon's sky as they burned off manufacturing waste.  
'Ti'm glass to find you in good health,' Zoe tried again. She was amazed that they were even alive. They had to be at least 80 and Rim dwellers didn't often survive their hard lives past sixty. Zoe noticed Wash' mother was missing most of her left hand.  
'Pert usr Wash never did send the Christmas cards he promised. He never was much for wing I know I sent a letter 'bout his death and a capture of his memorial stone.'  
Did his father's face changee at that?  
'I wasn't able to send you notice about Emman, on account of being grabbed from the hospital after she was born. n the crew was kinda busy themselves with the Second Revolution.  
'Bit Emma wanted to meet her father's family so, here we are. Pay your respects, baby, and I guess we'll be going.'  
Emma looked confused by the silence of her grandparents. The Alleyne cousins, all twenty something, treated her like a beloved pet and she was a definite force in the Frye troop. She made a bow to her grandparents.  
'我很荣幸能满足我敬爱的父亲的父母。' she said.  
Her grandfather broke his silence. 'Speak white! If a mongrel can talk proper.'  
Burne stepped between his grandfather and his young cousin. 'C'mon grampus, she's just a little girl. And her greeting was very proper and polite.'  
'Where'd you learn that heathen tongue, lad? What're they pushin at you in that school?'  
'Of course we learn Chinese, grampus. We'll need it if we're gonna do anything sides run some machine until we die.' It was obvious that this was a long running argument.  
Zoe interrupted. 'It's been interesting meeting y'all again. Reckon me and Emma will be getting home to Serenity now.'  
Burne spoke up. 'Let me walk with you, Aunt Zoe. I need to get away for a while and the road can be dangerous.'

Zoe's hand strayed to her holster. 'I'll … sure, son, pleased to have the company. Mr. Washburne, Mrs. Washburne. I doubt we'll ever meet again.' She spun on her bootheel and. pulling Emma's hand, marched back through the cluttered yard to the road. 

Looking down at her daughter's devastated face, she picked the lanky child up as if she were a tired toddler, hugged her close.  
'Yeah, sorry about all that,' said Burne.  
Zoe just looked at him.  
'They're old and… Nah, there ain't no excuse. They're just…'  
The trio trudge back up the road to the town, passing family compounds, each fenced away from the next. The fences varied, some high bamboo stakes, some chainlink, one barbed wire with Danger-Electric labels,even one neat white picket fence backed by a wide flowerbed on either side and a rose trellised gate.  
'Haha,' said Burne, noticing Zoe's surprise at the pretty setting in this tough neighbourhood.  
Zoe looked at him questioningly.  
'There's a haha, a deep ditch hidden by the flowers. and the gate is electrified. The Wallace' ain't the most welcoming folks.'  
Zoe started to laugh at the ridiculousness of the statement after her treatment by her husband's parents.  
Burne grinned again. 'They don't like me much either. I went to the town for schooling, stead of stain home. And I'd want to leave, see the Verse, like Uncle Hobie.'  
'Wash, ' said Zoe, ' We all called him Wash.'  
'I can carry Emma for bit if you like.'  
'No, we're fine. But thank you. For everything.'  
The left the residential area behind and were passing through a factory district. The air was fouler than usual even for Hastur Moon.  
'Fertilizer.' explained Burne.' And that's the refinery that smells all acid.' The refinery had prisonlike fencing. with guard towers.  
'What do they refine?''Lots of stuff in sea salt, but mostly the gold.Other rare earths too. Precious stuff. I looked into workin there, but daily cavity searches aren't my idea of fun. I mean, they don't even buy you dinner and a show first.'  
Zoe laughed again.' So what will you do when you leave school? Any good places to work?'  
'They all stink. Bad conditions and worse pay. Nobody comes here, so they're always hiring, but I guess most families are like mine.'  
'Mmmm?''  
'You leave school as soon as possible, start paying back your common up, get married, raise a bundle o kids, go into debt tp build a house for 'em with a mortgage from the factory, or rent from the company. And don't think about anything better.' He smiled grimly,' It's the best kind of life y'know? With the best kind of people. Guarding the gene pool/'  
'Gene pool?'  
'The family is big on blondes and gingers. Didja notice? These are recessive genes, so the family is trying to keep our colouring from dying out.'  
Zoe stroked Emma's yellow dreads. 'My daddy and Emma's daddy both had yellow hair. Guess that's where she gets it.'  
'She's beautiful, like her mamma.'  
Emma struggled out of her mother's arms . Once on the ground, she took her cousin's hand.

HASTUR MOON TO BEAUMONDE

Hastur Moon to Beaumonde: Overnight

Inbound cargo-- refined salt, gold, platinum, lithium  
\-- dried algae for Silverhold  
Outbound cargo--linen thread for Silverhold 

Serenity had to stop just outside Hastur's atmosphere for decontamination.  
'I can't believe you were willing to take Emma out into that filthy air, Zoe.' said Kaylee ' Even the Black don't burn ships clean.'  
'Ventilators helped. And Emma met one friendly relation.'  
Kaylee laid her hand on Zoe's arm. That' s one small blessing, anyways.'  
'Small but a blessing.'

They looked down at the cargo buy re-filled with refined salt; table, pickling and road, in 20 kilo sacks as well as locked boxes that held more precious materials that were byproducts of salt production: lithium for batteries and medicine, gold, platinum. All was bound for Barden Docks in one of the cleaner areas fo Beaumonde. 

'Da all the kids have winter clothes that will fit? It'll be cold when we land.'  
'Beege can wear Derry's castoffs, andI think we still have Emmas' old boots for Derry. But both River and Emma will need coats.'  
'We should stop putting River with the kids. She's near twenty years older than Emma. She'll be thirty soon enough.  
'But she still needs supervision.like the little ones. Specially when Simon's not aboard.'

Zoe said, 'We'll pick him up at Harvest at the Mission.'

The cargo exchange went well. The refined salt and minerals were Company cargo, signed for and bank transfers returned to Perse on Persephone. The new cargo was linen thread in huge rolls bound for the textile mills on Silverhold where weaving and clothing manufacture was the specialty of mmmmmmm province. But first they would stop on Beggar's Tin, where Mal had arranged a private job. 

 

￼

 

THIRD LEG  
BEGGAR'S TIN MOON off SILVERHOLD  
Beaumonde to Silverhold: Eleven weeks  
Silverhold to Beggar's Tin Moon: Overnight

Inbound cargo-- -- dried algae for Silverhold  
Outbound cargo--linen thread for Silverhold 

Beggar's Tin was a barren world. Gravity was noticeably lower than normal, which meant less strain on workers, although mass of course was unaffected.  
As usual Mal met up with his contact in a dive bar. He ordered beer for himself, River and Zoe, noticing that among the choices was Mudder's Milk, imported from Higgin's Moon. The waitress wore a scarlet cheong-sam, her hair elaborately styled and held in place with long sticks.  
'She's a fancy piece for a place like this,' Mal remarked.  
'Less there than meets the eye,' murmured River. 'Are there snacks?'  
'You're a bottomless pit these days, Tross. Not sure I'd trust the kitchen here though.'  
Zoe's eyes narrowed,'Think that's our contact, sir?'  
A short, athletically built man, stood in the doorway, looking about. River noticed the waitress indicated the crew with a subtle motion of her chin.  
'Captain Reynolds?' he asked. If Mal cared about dress he would've envied the man's shantung silk suit, cut to emphasize his broad chest.  
'Mr. Kelly? ' The men shook. 'My first mate Zoe Washburne and pilot River Tam.'  
The beer arrived and Kelly ordered a bottled Tsing Tao. The waitress opened it at the table and ignoring the offered glass, Kelly wiped the mouth of the bottle with a pristine white linen handkerchief.

Here's to successful negotiations!' he said and drank deep.  
River nodded and took a small sip of her draft. Mal and Zoe followed her lead.  
'You looking to move some mining by-products off world, I understand, Mr. Kelly?' asked Zoe.  
Kelly looked mildly surprised that the First Mate had begun rather than the Captain.  
'Yes, nothing too bulky, but requires secure handling.'  
'And where do we deliver to?'  
'That would be Hera , for the luxury trade there.'  
'We have several stops before Hera. This New Canaan Run, we have strictly legal cargoes set up outbound and inbound from Silverhold to Harvest to New Canaan before we're scheduled for Hera.'  
'Understood, My cargo won't go bad during the trip.' He gave a convincingly sincere grin.  
'Guns?' asked Mal suddenly.  
'No! No, too dangerous. Easy to buy here and Silverhold is known for quality weaponry. Easy to sell on, but even the small gunsmiths have to install trackers on their product. Alliance is death on cheaters.'  
'Death by firing squad,' River said. 'Using the smuggler's own guns.'  
'You know about that part, Ms. Tam? Exactly'  
'So we'd be carryin?' Zoe asked.  
'Gold bullion. Not as dangerous. At worst , the bullion is confiscated. I never hear of any action against the smugglers.'  
'Transport company,' put in Mal.  
Kelly gave a thin smile. 'I suspect that the confiscated pretty never goes to the government. Fed officers may look on such untraceable cargoes as part of their pensionable time.'  
'Sounds like the risky part is all on us though. Do we get paid upfront? '  
'On delivery. No point in paying someone not to deliver.'  
Mal bristled, but Zoe spoke calmly. '30% mid-rate up front and 10% on delivery or not for us. We got a legal cargo to deliver and kids on board. Pay ain't good enough against the risk other.'  
'All that I knew. Reason I want you. You even look as respectable as any tramp ship out here can. ' He seemed oblivious to Mal's annoyance at the slur on his ship.  
'I know you already have bullion cargo. Mine wouldn't set off any detectors.'  
'True.'  
'How about 15% of mid-rate upfront and 5 % of mid-rate on arrival?'  
'How about 25% upfront, 5% arrival? There are four stops between Silverhold and Hera. We could get inspected at any stop. Not to mention Black stops by the Navy.'  
'Thirty percent is steep. I'd have to see where you were stashing it.'  
'No,' said Mal.'Them hidey-holes is our bread and butter. Well, not so much anymore, but definitely the jam.'  
'Apricot.' said River.  
Kelly stared at her.  
'She likes apricot jam best,' explained Zoe.  
Kelly looked at the girl. Her reason for being with them was unclear. She was looking around, not watchfully like a bodyguard, but more vaguely. Her eyes kept returning to the waitress. Maybe having Gertrude at the meetup was a mistake. He sighed theatrically.  
'I understand about the secure stowage. Let that go. Make it 10 percent upfront and 10 % on arrival. And we can both hope the exchange is in our favour.'  
River was drawing on the sticky table with beer drippings. She pressed her foot against Zoe's boot.  
'Works.'  
Kelly sighed.'That may be my best bet. I do have to get this cargo off-planet ay-sap. It's pretty warm, dong ma?'  
'We'll be in touch. No cortex, reckon. Where does your pretty piece usually hang out?' Zoe indicated the elegant waitress.  
'Ah. Gertrude. I see the beginning of our problem. You can leave a message at the Pink Kitten Pachinko Parlour on Elgin Boulevard. On paper and addressed to Gertrude Lysenko.'  
The crew began to rise and Kelly was immediately behind River, pulling out her chair. 'It was good to meet you all, especially you, Ms. Tam. I hope we will see each other again, perhaps socially?'  
River gave him a flat look.'You have our contact. Next time though, no roofies.'  
Kelly watched open-mouthed as the three left the bar. 

￼

MIKE KELLY 

'That was why you weren't drinkin? You can taste a persuader?' asked Mal.  
'No, I could hear the server. She knew what was in them. Just enough to make you amenable. Stronger effect on a smaller person.'  
'Like you,' said Zoe.  
'And you're still willin to let him call?' asked Mal.  
River shrugged. 'There's been a distinct lack of tasty in my life lately.'  
'We gotta keep this girl away from Jayne, sir.'  
'Be careful, mei mei,' said Mal. 'That Kelly don't have a clean heart.'

 

Kelly dropped off his cargo in person a few days later. A cheerful young woman was sitting outside, trolling for passengers while nursing her baby. River was playing tag with a motley bunch of spacer children including a tall preteen with more than a passing resemblance to the Amazon first mate.  
'Small cargo for Captain Reynolds.'  
'You must be Mr. Kelly,' the pretty mother smiled. 'Derry, get someone to help the mister here.'  
A young boy, with a fringe of brown hair hanging in his bright blue eyes dashed up the ramp.  
'You're not travelling' with us?' the woman asked.  
'Thank you , no. I have a business to run here. This is just a small export that needed special handling.'  
River and the tall girl wandered over. The younger girl was nearly his height. Miss Tam was a good 10 cm. taller.  
'Miss Tam. I'm so pleased to see you again.'  
River looked at him solemnly.  
'Are you leaving today?'  
'We were,' answered Kaylee.' But there was an accident on the mono between the mill and here. We only got half of our cargo. Rest arrives late tonight, more likely tomorra morning.'  
A large man descended the ramp. 'This all? Could have posted it.' He grabbed the rolling case from Kelly and tramped back up the ramp.  
Kelly's eyes followed him.  
'Wanted to be tasting,' said River. 'But he went hungry.'  
Kaylee smiled, 'Jayne thought the delay meant he could have shore leave when the spools were held up. Mal made him stay with me and the kids.'  
Kelly took another look at Miss Tam. In spite of her clear brow and dark hair, she was definitely in her twenties, even late twenties. Kaylee wasn't much older. Why was she classed with the kids? There was an oddness to her that he found fascinating. 

 

Emma called over the ship comm. 'We gotta wave for you, Auntie River.'  
'I'll take it in my bunk.'

As the crew gathered for supper, River made her entrance. She wore her usual black catsuit, but her hair was intricately dressed and the sparkling ornaments matched her ear studs. She carried a shiny woven metal shoulder purse. A little mascara and some cheek and lip colour enhanced her pale beauty.  
'You're so audrey,' breathed Emma.  
'Do you have your comm? And your locator? ' demanded Mal.  
'Yes, Captain Daddy, and I will be home before pumpkin hour.'

The entry signal by the cargo bay door sounded. Derry dashed off and brought Mike Kelly, who looked slightly aghast at eight faces checking him over.  
'Auntie, he says he's here for you,' announced Derry.  
'A pleasure to meet you again, Captain, Ms. Washburne.'  
Kaylee smiled at him, 'I'm Kaylee and these are my Beege and Derry. Emma is Zoe's girl an the big guy is Jayne.'  
Jayne, as he usually did when meeting River's suitors, growled.  
Kelly tried to regain his equilibrium. What was meant to be a pleasant smile turned into a shit-eating grin when Mal made a sound similar to Jayne's.  
'Any plans?' he demanded.  
'I thought we'd go to the theatre. There's a play, 'Never Say Never' at the Gaiety or the Sihnon Ballet has a production of 'The White-Haired Girl'.'  
'Ballet.' said River.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdhZCNahwjg

￼

'We have time for a bite before the theatre if you don't mind a dumpling shop, I'll reserve seats on our way. We can have a proper dinner after if you're not tired.'  
'Don't be late, Tross,' said the captain, 'We need our pilot for take off tomorra.'  
'Pumpkins, Captain Daddy.'

Kelly watched in amazement as River scooped up her twentieth dumpling . Her grace and dainty manners were like those of a Core lady, but her appetite was that of a half-starved Rim orphan. Her pink tongue licked around her full lips sensually, as if dumplings were the best thing she'd ever tasted. She raised the bowl to those lips and drank the broth the dumplings had been served in, first adding chili garlic sauce to the bland soup.  
'Garlic keeps away vampires,' she told Kelly seriously.' Chili warms the blood.'  
'Those would work against each other wouldn't they?' Kelly asked. 'Wouldn't vampires prefer warm blood to cold?'  
'Cold blood clots.'  
Kelly expected her to continue, but she smiled brightly.'Let's go watch the girl kill the oppressors!'

￼

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvT_iBRNpiQ

River was entranced by the ballet, which she had a blurry memory of seeing as a child on Osiris.  
'She doesn't stop.' she said.  
'Having her sweetheart find her gives her a happy ending.'  
'Having her sweetheart and the Eighth Army find her.'  
'Don't you think her personal story would be enough?'  
'The captain needed an army, but it wasn't big enough. He kept moving so the wicked landlord wouldn't kill him.'  
'That why he turned down my cargo?'  
'Tip. Don't try to roofie a potential client.'  
'He noticed that ,eh?' Kelly laughed with no trace of remorse.' Just a touch to make clients more amenable.'  
'Miss Manners would disagree.'  
'Business-- nothing personal, but this evening is personal . Are you enjoying it?'  
'Yes. The dumplings were plump, the dancers soared, the girl vanquished the evil doer. All satisfactory so far.'  
'I promised you a proper dinner.'  
'Not hungry. Daddy wants me home by midnight.'  
'We have about an hour. Perhaps we could walk back?'  
'Will there be snacks on the way?'  
'Of course, but I thought you weren't hungry?'  
'Not now, but we may need our stamina.'  
'I guess you don't get much exercise on a boat.'  
She gave him her 'boob' look. 

They visited a couple of food trucks as they walked back to Serenity, following brightly lit streets to the even more brilliantly lit dockyards.  
At the cargo bay door, they were sharing a potato, spiral cut and skewered, deep-fried and heavily salted.  
Having cleaned her own fingers before entering the entry code, River started licking Kelly's fingers clean of salt. He leaned in and River looked surprised.  
'No kiss goodnight?' he asked.  
'Come in.'  
'So your Daddy can growl at me again?'  
'So we can fuck.'  
Kelly was amused at the rough language in River's cultured Core accent, but he followed her willingly into the cargo bay and watched as she locked the door after herself. 'Don't let the kidnappers in again, ' she explained.  
'Again?'  
But she was pulling him by the hand up the companionway and into a narrow corridor lined with doors. The end door opened to her touch and she climbed down a narrow ladder. Kelly followed, and found River halfway out of her jumpsuit. He stopped on the ladder. For once his head was higher than hers, and he reached out to her nape and pulled her face into a kiss. She moved her hand over his broad chest, playing with the tie fastenings. His hand pulled the clips from her hair and it cascaded down her back. 'Mmmm.' he said.'You taste like sugar and hoisin and grease and vinegar and pepper.'  
'Like barbecue duck?'  
'My favourite food.' he kissed her again, then moved his lips to her clavicle.' And here you taste like salt and rosewater.'  
He supported himself on her shoulder while he stepped down to the floor, leaving his eyes once again on a level with her mouth.'You have the most beautiful lips.' He pushed himself up to hold her upper lip lightly between his teeth. She bent to him and breathed heavily.  
He had both hands free now, and pushed her catsuit off her shoulders. River stepped back and sat on the bed. The scarlet brocade on the duvet made her pale skin glow in the dim light of the bunk. He still stood, helping her out of the catsuit and admiring her slim body as it was revealed.  
She shimmied out of the snug garment, and helped him with his fine linen shirt, then rubbed her hand against the outline of his cock, pushing for release from his twill pants. With one hand on her nape, he opened his fly buttons and released his cock into her waiting hand. She grinned and engulfed it in her mouth,her tongue swirling around it and making him groan.  
'Miss Tam, Miss… what is your personal name, anyway?' he gasped.  
She sucked and he gasped again, forgetting even his own name for a moment. He felt himself on the verge and reluctantly pulled back, releasing himself. River made a moue of disappointment.  
'Sorry, I'd.. I'd rather take my time and make you happy too. I'm not a randy teenager.'  
'Are you ready to fuck me now?'  
Again the rough language in cultured tones. He shivered with lust. He lightly pushed her onto her back and climbed on top of her, pulling her hair free and kissing that incredible mouth. Her tongue stroked his and he nearly lost control.  
'Do you have any condoms?' he asked.  
'I take my contras.'  
'I just don't want to be too fast for you.'  
She reached behind a silk curtain over the bed and pulled out a handful of varicoloured wrappers. Kelly chose one that he knew would help him take his time. River's slender fingers helped him roll it on, and before he knew it her legs were wrapped around him and she was poised for his entry.  
Kelly pushed himself gently into her. She was ready, not really needing the lubricant on the wrap. As he pushed forward she tightened around him, making him work his way into her hot velvet.  
'You're… Miss Tam, you…,' he muttered.  
Her sweet voice was in his ear, murmuring intensely,' Tā mā de wǒ xīnkǔ, gěi wǒ nàgè yìng jiāhuo, tā mā de wǒ xiàng yī tái jīqì, ràng wǒ dádào gāocháo, wǒ huì pēn chū xiàng yīgè pēnquán.'  
Her every move every wiggle, each kiss or bite, was exactly what he wanted at that moment.'Nán, nán, ràng wǒ jiān jiào. ' Even her words were what he wanted to hear.  
'Wǒ xūyào yīgè dà gōngjī, gěi wǒ gèng duō. Tā mā de wǒ. Tā mā de wǒ. Nín de yīnjīng shì rúcǐ zhī dà.'  
He felt her hand on his balls,gently pressing them closer to his body. It was what he wanted and he came, feeling as if his orgasm would never end, pulsing over and over into her tight cunt.  
Red-faced, sweaty, and breathless, he opened his eyes and kissed her cool lips.  
'Flu ni tar ze pam,' she whispered. He didn't know what she meant.

When he awoke, she was gone. He was confused and unsure how long he had been asleep. He stretched wondering here Miss Tam, damn, what was her personal name, after that tussle they should be on a first name basis. Where had she gone. He reviewed the evening, passing quickly over the dumpling shop and the ballet, to dwell on the great sex, amazing sex, he had enjoyed. Remembering, his hand went to his cock and he stroked himself. He came suddenly and urgently. Embarrassed he looked about for something to clean off the sheets.  
He saw a standard loo in a corner and used it , washing his face, crotch and hands at the fold down sink. He looked around . Fastidiously he wiped the heavy linen sheets with a scrap of toilet paper,straightened them and pulled up the brocade duvet. His movements pushed aside the embroidered silk hanging behind the bed.  
He gasped.  
The hanging concealed an array of … sharp pointy things. Knives from stiletto to bowie, tomahawks and hatchets and what appeared to be a full size battle-axe.  
All were in excellent condition, clean and, above all, sharp.  
'Flowers. I guess I'll have flowers delivered as a thank you.' He didn't want her to think he was less than perfectly polite. The Core put great store on appearances.

He dressed in the white lawn shirt and twill trousers he had worn last night but carried his light wool cape. Up the ladder and down the companionway to the cargo bay door. 

Which was locked.  
For the first time, Kelly became aware of a background hum. He listened carefully. The hum was the sound of engines.  
Was this ship flying?  
Panicked , he swung around. He heard voices further back in the ship and headed for them.

He found the kitchen, and the same crew he met last night goggled at him.  
The captain said, 'Huh.' while the First Mate leapt to her feet, hand on pistol.  
Who carries a gun on a spaceship? Kelly wondered.  
'Could someone open the door for me?' he asked.  
The man called Jayne guffawed, 'Right cold outside buddyboy. Not that you'd notice, 'fore you explode.'  
'Boom!' said the small boy, giggling.  
The baby crowed, 'Boom, boom, boom!'  
Their mother shushed them. 'What are you doing here? We left Beggar's Tin hours ago. We'll be landin at Centreridge Dock any minute.'  
'I… escorted Miss Tam back to the ship and … she invited me in. …. I just woke up.'  
The captain gave him a 'protective daddy' look.  
'Emma, go take over the bridge for a bit.'  
The little girl jump up and headed forward.  
'Don't try to land, ' the captain added. 'Just don't hit any mountains … or the ground.'  
Was the girl more than eleven? wondered Kelly as she raced out of the kitchen.  
Kaylee gave him a cup of tea and a bowl , indicating the rice pot in the middle of the table.  
River entered and stopped. 'I forgot. There were… emotions…and can I keep him, captain?' The girl was agitated, her hands twisting in her hair, looking from Kelly to the captain.  
'No, you can't 'keep' him,' the captain said firmly.' You can't keep people, less'n they want to stay.' River looked as if she was going to interrupt. 'And he can't stay, 'cause I say so. He gets off at Centreridge.'  
'Wait a minute, Captain Reynolds, ' said Kelly. ' I didn't ask for a trip to Silverhold and I don't even have a decent coat for the northern weather. I demand that you take me back to Beggar's Tin.'  
'Can't. We're on a schedule.'  
'Must. Or I'll bring charges of kidnapping against you.'  
'Seems to me like you got here willingly, sniffin' after lil River's pussy.' said Jayne.  
The captain glared at both men, then threw up his hands. 'Let me think on. Tross, get back to the bridge and give us a gentle landing.'

 

￼

 

When Emma returned, the adult crew retired to the infirmary leaving Kelly with the children. the baby crawled on his lap and knelt there, staring into his eyes. The older children stared too. The boy from time to time whispered , 'Boom' and they dissolved into laughter.  
Eventually the pitot's voice came over the comm. 'Approaching Centreridge and cleared for landing.'  
There was only the slightest bump as the ship set down, but it unbalanced the baby on his lap. As she fell from her knees to her bottom, he learned that she was still in diapers. His pants were wet where she sat. 

The crew returned from the infirmary.  
'Git in here, Tross,' the captain commanded and the girl quickly joined them.  
'We're on a schedule here, the New Canaan Run, so we can't return you. Riv.' he addressed the pilot. 'You done wrong not putting your light'o'love off before we left.'  
'Forgot,' muttered the girl.  
'Thinkin with yer…'  
'Captain,' murmured Kaylee.'Children.'  
'Anyways. Kelly, we're both got a little problem with the authorities if either of us draws their attention. So we're gonna give you three things, River will pay your fare back to your moon from her own money. We'll all apologize for not makin sure no accidental travellers were on the boat before we left. We should remember what happened last time. '  
Zoe's arm around her daughter tightened.  
'And we owe you a favour. We 'll be doin this Run regular and we will do business in future.'

Kelly considered. And. 'Is there a chance of another night with River?' he asked.  
The pilot giggled. 

￼

The Flamers  
"Here are buried those who fought because they had no choice but to do so. May they be reborn in their next life as birds, that they may know the freedom which was denied them in this life, by those who were forced to fight against them."  
― memorial to the Flamers  
Within recent memory, Silverhold was the site of a major showdown between a ruthless group of slavers known as the Black Flames and a coalition led by the Golden Dragon, including freelance ships and Alliance forces. The slaves, called "Flamers", were marked with bar codes and implanted with devices which could punish them with a shock or kill them by immolation. The Flamers were forced to fight against their would-be rescuers. After a pitched battle and tremendous losses, the slaving operation was finally brought down. A graveyard and statue stand as a memorial to these tragic events.

FOURTH LEG-  
SILVERHOLD to HARVEST  
Silverhold to Harvest: Two weeks

Inbound cargo: - linen thread for weaving mills  
\- dried algae from Beaumonde for protein plants  
-Lithium for pharmaceutical manufacturers on Harvest  
-smuggled bullion for Hera  
Outbound cargo: -linen clothes and fabric for Harvest and further  
-Lithium for pharmaceutical manufacturers on Harvest  
-smuggled gold bound for Hera

It took most of the day to unload the minerals from the cargo bay. Kelly arranged transport back to Beggar's Tin and River paid his way with coin saved from her wages.  
Like the rest of the crew, River got 10% of any job, plus kitchen privileges and her bunk. And, with the new , legal and profitable jobs they were getting through Perseus Alleyne, the fare barely touched her capital. 

Zoe was entrusted with keeping the books straight for Perseus' employers. And the other set.

'After this run, we should buzz by Paquin an visit my folks.' Kaylee told Mal as he took a break after unloading 20 kilo sacks of refined salt.  
'Kid’s’ll like that. An we can get shut of some of this coin.'  
'How much do we have now, capt'n?' she asked, leaning back agains his sweaty chest. He smelled disturbingly male.  
'No idea. Ain't really been keepin track. Is there somethin expensive you want, mei mei?'  
'Got most everything I want, you, Derry, Baby Girl, Serenity, warm place to sleep, real food on the table. Could do with a hydraulic lift and maybe nother mule.'  
'No diamonds? A sable cloak? Some pretty dresses?'  
'Come to think-- when we get to Hera,me an River are goin shoppin. Maybe Zoe and Emma too. We all want some new clothes.'  
'Even Emma?'  
'She wants a catsuit like River's. Seems to consider it part of piloting.' Kaylee laughed.  
'Long as she don't take to painful shirts like her Daddy.'  
'Where's River? I still don't like her wandering around alone.'  
'In her bunk. Kelly's ship don't leave til 1700. Where are the kids?'  
'Playin outside with the kids from Pretty Baby. Emma has Beege.'  
'So….'  
'Yeah, wanna tussle?'  
'You may have to do most of the hard work, Kaywinnet. Them sacks didn't move themselves.'  
She whispered in his ear, 'I'll ride you like a rodeo pony, Malcolm. C'mon.'

They left the cargo by, hand in hand. Kaylee pulling her husband back to their suite in the passenger dorms. Child free moments on a small ship were precious.

At 1600 hours, River and Kelly came down the companionway from the crew bunks. At the ramp, Kelly tried to kiss her, but she turned her face away.  
Jayne, sitting in Kaylee's lawn chair at the bottom of the ramp, Baby Girl sleeping on his shoulder, watched them.  
'Will I see you again, tiánměi shàonǚ ?' Kelly asked. River looked confused.  
'Can't see the future. There's no room, too much now.'  
'If y'ain't figured yet, r'River's a little crazy.'  
'That's a damn rude remark,' Kelly said angrily.  
'True though. She's batshit nuts. Don't bug her, she'll cut you,' He pulled up his tee to show a long thin scar across his chest. The baby stirred restlessly.  
'You look better in red,' muttered River.  
Kelly was unsure what to say.  
'Damn good pilot,though,' added Jayne cheerfully. 'An from the noises she was makin, she prob'ly likes you.'  
With no response available, Kelly turned back to River, who was looking over at the playing children.  
'I'll call you when I get back to Beggar's Tin, then?' he asked, but she had already left to join the kids.  
'Batshit,' said Jayne. 'Hey, man to man, how is she in the sack?'  
'Best I've ever…. not something a gentleman would ever discuss,' Kelly said stiffly.  
'I figured. She'd always know what you wanted,' Jayne grunted. 'Hell, she's punched me a few times, just for what I was thinkin. Anyways Mal'd kill me, if I tried anythin.'  
'You must have an open face.'  
'Naw, River's a Reader, didn't you work that out? Here comes our cargo,' He whistled to Emma to take over the sleeping baby and flagged the two mules hauling bid spools of Glucklich Jia linen thread from the mills of Silverhold, that Serenity would carry to the weavers on Harvest.  
Zoe and Mal appeared to help with the cargo. Kelly, blowing a kiss to River, headed for his ride home. She was playing tag and didn't notice. 

Kaylee had put the children to bed and joined Mal in the commons where he was reading.  
'Not much excitement on this run, capt'n.'  
'Not yet, Jayne ain't our best ticket seller. We got a couple hours in the morning fore Simon and David arrive. It'd be good to have passengers. They have stories t'keep the kids entertained,specially when there's no room t'play in the cargo bay.'

Serenity was cleared by Centrebridge Dock flight control just as Red Sun rose on the dockyard. Kaylee was doing a quick walkaround inspection, when a fresh faced young woman approached her.  
'You're bound for Harvest? Where are you puttin' down?'  
'Lemongrass, near the textile mills.'  
'Are you taken passengers? I'm headed there for a job.' She indicated her duffle and rollercase.  
'We got two cabins available, or a just a bunkie if yer short of cash.'  
'Just a bunk is fine. I can pay in scrip or coin.'  
'We always prefer coin.' After agreeing on the fare, Kaylee invited the girl aboard and showed her to the bunkie in the passenger area.  
'Our last passenger just left,' Kaylee said, not mentioning that circumstances of Kelly's passage. 'So you got the bunk to yourself. Sheets are clean, extra blankets in the cupboard, sink an commode here. There's a shower room on the way to the commons. I'm Kaylee, by the way, ship's mechanic.'  
'Rosa-Lucia Berg.' The women shook and Kaylee collected the fare.  
'If you want a few minutes?'  
'No, I'm fine.'  
'Then why don't you join the crew for breakfast? I think Zoe picked up some eggs yesterday.'  
Zoe had and had also found some sweet cider. Kaylee poured cups for herself and for Rosa-Lucia. She took her baby girl from Mal.  
'This is Rosa, she's job hunting on Harvest.'  
Mal shook the passenger's hand. 'Feel free to use the kitchen and commons, but please stay out of the cargo bay. The bridge and the engine room are also restricted. If you feel peckish, you can have anything in the unlocked cabinets.'  
'We'd be obliged if you wash up after yourself, though,' said Jayne.  
'This your week on dishes, Jayne? Dinner we usually eat together around 1800, early because of the kids.'  
Rosa-Lucia had only seen the baby who Kaylee was trying to persuade to eat some sweetened porridge.  
'They's vid and bookpads in the commons and exercise equipment in the cargo bay, but as I said, you'll need a crew as escort there.'  
'You'd want a spotter anyways,' added Jayne.  
'I may take you up on that, if it's an offer,' Rosa said, smiling at the big merc.

It was and she did,which meant that the quiet time between stops were more relaxing for the crew, who didn't have to put up with a moody, restless Jayne. She added something to dinner conversations too with a spirited defence of the value of good government, while agreeing with Mal that the current state of the Alliance was not noticeably better than it was before the Unification War. 

'I really blame Blue Sun Corporation.' she said that night. 'They run he government and if it's good for Blue Sun they think its good for all the 'Verse.'  
'The government makes the rules, ' Mal pointed out.  
'Make a difference between 'government' and 'politicians', Captain,' Rosa-Lucia said. ‘The government is the people who carry out the programs the politicians make.'  
'An ways too strict bout it too.'  
'And sometimes not strict enough. The same law should apply to everybody, but when was the last time you heard of a big company begin charged with slave-trading?'  
'Never that I can think of.'  
'No they pick out the little guys, the farmers, the brothels, the small factories, even families who buy a couple of servants.'  
'And you think they shouldn't be charged? Is it better to be enslaved personal-like than by some faceless company?'  
'Of course not, I'm just saying that I've seen a lot more slave-trading going on that the people with a dozen servants can account for. And then there is bond-slavery.'  
'Like them Mudders at Canton, few years back? ' asked Jayne.  
'Yes. In theory they borrowed money and are paying it off with their labour, but the wages are low and have to be spent at the company store.'  
'But they go into it willingly,' said Kaylee.  
'Not always, mei mei, ' said Mal, 'Sometimes a kid is sold by parents, or the papers is forged. Then all they can hope for is money to fall from the sky.'  
The crew laughed. Rosa-Lucia looked puzzled.  
Kaylee explained, 'That actually happened on Higgin's Moon. Jayne can tell you about it sometime.'  
'I'd be interested,' she smiled at Jayne, then turned back to Mal. 'And more important, or at least as important, slavery, bond or no, keeps wages down for free workers.'  
'Like you.'  
'Mmm. Like me.' Her mouth twisted a little.  
'Makes sense, if all the boss has to do is feed the workers, he ain't gonna pay more'n that for someone who wants a better life, maybe send the kids to school,' said Kaylee.  
'Spread the money around and more, all those free workers will buy the stuff they make.'  
'Not much we can do about it, though,' said Mal.  
'Every little bit helps. Even just voting for parties that ain't aligned with the corporations.'  
'Like them Greenies?' asked Jayne.  
Mal looked surprised that Jayne knew even that much about politics.  
'Okay, maybe,' Rosa-Lucia said, ' Blue Sun doesn't own them anyway, not like the Vanguard.'

The last morning before Harvest, Zoe met Rosa emerging from Jayne's bunk. 

At Harvest, the longshore crew were waiting for Serenity. Off-loading started immediately. Jayne and Zoe, muscle and management, worked smoothly together to get the huge spools onto the Blue Sun trucks which would take them to the Blue Sun mill that would weave the cloth for the Blue Sun garment factories. The finished garments would be shipped, some as Serenity's next cargo, to Blue Sun wholesalers for distribution to Blue Sun retailers all over the 'Verse.  
'Including back to Silverhold,' said Rosa-Lucia bitterly.'Well Kaylee, thank you for your hospitality. '  
She looked over Jayne, laughing with a longshoreman as they hoisted the large spools.  
'Was this anything' serious?' asked Kaylee  
'Nah, just ships passing in the Black,' sighed Rosa-Lucia.  
'Jayne gave you a good time, I hope?' said Kaylee.' He's a bit rough in his talk and most of his women is pros.'  
'No worries,' she smiled brightly,'Look can I leave my wave for the next time you visit Harvest? I really enjoyed this trip. Would've even without the …. extra service.'  
Kaylee laughed and they exchanged contact ID. 'We're here overnight. Let me know if the job works out?'

With a wave, Rosa-Lucia squared her shoulders and marched down the ramp to her new life. 

Kaylee took River and the children shopping for clothing, while the new cargo, bales of cloth and of shirts, was being loaded. The shops near the docks specialized in remainders and seconds from the Blue Sun conglomerate. There was lots of choice and prices were good. although it was important to watch for flaws like tears of mismatched colours. Some ships traded exclusively in those off-brand goods, peddling to small shops on homesteading Rim worlds. 

When they returned, burdened by bags and nibbling on corn dogs, sugar fried potatoes, cold dumplings,street food; the cargo bay had been emptied and refilled. They would carry processed foodstuffs, mostly protein but also canned fruit, to New Canaan, stopping first to drop a shipment of linen shirts on Faraday Moon.  
'Them shirts if from the Triangle Factory. That's where lil Rosa was lookin for work,' said Jayne.  
'We're ready to go, soon's Simon and Davie join us, but you an Zoe ain't had no shore leave,’ said Mal. 'You want to take some private time?'  
'I don't have nuthin special to do,' said Jayne.'Just another dockyard.'  
'I'd like to go check out the theatre,' said Zoe. 'The music hall flyer says that the Pepper Troupe is appearing. I could take Emma and maybe River, if no one else wants to go.'  
Kaylee murmured to Jayne, 'I have Rosa-Lucia's wave if you think she might like to see you.'  
Jayne brightened. 'Yeah, thanks, lil Kaylee.'

Mal and Kaylee enjoyed a quiet family evening at home with their children, talking about everything and nothing. The baby's anxiety to walk and reluctance to speak. Derry's rapid progress with reading and excellent grasp of arithmetic. The price of the new clothes. And the uses they could make of the coin accumulating under the outbuildings on Kaylee's daddy's land. 

The children had been put to bed, and their parents were cuddled on the chesterfield, Kaylee reading one of her romances, Mal playing a game on the Cortex.

Mal's comm pinged.  
'Jayne? You need bail already?'  
'I'm at the Triangle factory. It's burning and Rosa's inside.'  
' Gwai-gwai long duh dong! Is the fire department there?'  
'No. Can you bring the mule, Mal? I'm gonna try to get her out, but she's on the third floor.'  
Mal was already moving. 'Meet you there,' he said, his comm giving him the coordinates.

Mal sped above the street traffic in the hovermule, pleased that there were no cops around to ticket him for the violation. The factory was only about two klicks from the docks. A large crowd was milling about.  
'The doors are locked! The girls are trapped inside!' a bystander was shouting. The fourth and fifth floor windows had exploded and some of the crowd looked festive with glass shards caught in their hair. Others were having cuts tended by a chaplain and a woman in medical scrubs.  
Mal spotted Jayne by his height and waved him over.  
'SitRep!' he barked.  
Jayne looked puzzled. Mal sighed.'What's happenin?'  
'I was goin ta pick up Rosa after her shift. Been here bout half an hour. You could see the fire on the fourth floor then, but no one was leaving. Called Rosa and she tol me they'd been tol to keep working. That there was just a little accident upstairs.  
'Then one of the girls tried to open the stairwell and it was locked. Which is when I arrived.'  
'Comm and tell her to go to the window on the north side. We'll come up to it, or near enough, she can jump out.'  
Jayne relayed the instructions. 'She says the windows is locked too.'  
'Tell her to throw a sewing machine through it . Or the foreman.'  
A serging machine flew through the central window followed by the limp form of a well-dressed woman.  
'The foreman, reckon?' grinned Jayne.  
Mal brought the mule but only to the top of the second floor window. 'Tell her she'll have to jump.’  
But the first through the window was a very pregnant Chinese woman, followed by a girl barely into her teens. Jayne settled them, while Mal took the mule down to the ground.The next trip picked up two more youngsters and a skinny white haired man, who yelped as he landed in the mule.  
Jayne passed the old man over to the first aid crew, and they went up again. Another flying mule and another arrived.  
The workers on the second floor had sussed out what was happening and were jumping from their own smashed windows The first aid crew were busy with cuts and broken bones. An ambulance arrived from the dockyard's Book Memorial Clinic and set up a smoke inhalation recovery unit. 

Mal and Jayne had evacuated over forty workers and still had not seen Rosa-Lucia. With a crash of concrete and flying gypsum, the fifth floor collapsed. The fourth followed, then the extra weight collapsed the building floor by floor. A cloud of fine debris filled the air.  
Jayne moaned. Mal had not seen him so upset since he got news of the death of his invalid brother, Matty.  
Finally, a fire truck arrived and hooking up to a hydrant began spraying the still burning wreckage.  
Jayne started forward and was stopped by the fire marshal. 'Not until the fire's out, son. Too dangerous.'  
Jayne swore incoherently.  
'Where the ten shuh duh you been! This place has been burning for near on an hour.' shouted Mal.  
'We're reserve. Took a while to get a crew together. Let us do our job now, sir,' she replied. The marshal turned away and made hand signals to guide one fire crew to aim their hose higher, then trotted over to the makeshift clinic.  
'Reserve?' shouted Jayne.  
'Control your friend, sir.' she said to Mal.' The main force, police and fire are at the Governor's Palace for his son's wedding reception. Only reserves are available.'  
'Are they comin?' shouted Jayne.  
'Dunno. If the governor and the chief think it necessary. That your mule? Could you help ferry patients to the hospital?'

Mal and Jayne spent the next four hours moving patients to Book Memorial.  
There had been about 500 working the day shift at Triangle Shirt . Some 300 made it out.  
According to rumour.  
There was no official news of the fire on the Cortex channels except a business report on damage to the building and the rising cost of insurance to industry. 

￼

FIFTH LEG  
HARVEST TO NEW CANAAN -The Black  
Harvest to New Canaan: Sixteen weeks

Inbound- foodstuffs- prepared foods including protein - canned foods  
\- fresh produce and grain  
-herbs and lithium- raw material for medicines  
-linen shirts for Farraday Moon  
Outbound- stolen gems from Ugarit for Hera  
-smuggled gold from Beggar's Tin for Hera  
-linen shirts - several drops  
-foodstuffs- prepared foods including protein - canned foods  
-pineapples  
Landing at Bishop Docks which are technically restricted

 

Simon and David arrived from their clinic at Sweetwater as Mal and Jayne pulled up. They were shocked by their friends tired and filthy appearance.  
As they stored the mule and the medics brought in their luggage and equipment from their taxi, Mal explained what had happened overnight.  
Simon made a call to the Flying Doctors station and arranged for them to stay on Harvest to help at the Book Hospital. A trauma surgeon with expertise in cosmetic burn surgery would be invaluable. Arrangements were made to pick up Simon and David on Dyton Colony.

While arrangements had been made for the medics' changed schedules, Emma had washed the men's clothes and repacked their bags. River and Kaylee were preparing Serenity for the next leg to New Canaan. Zoe was accepting the last pallets of cargo, fruit and vegetables bound for New Canaan, relatively low cost at this time of year on Harvest but a high value cargo if delivered promptly to Baal, the major centre of the terraformed basin on the almost unliveable planet. 

The sixteen weeks they would need for travel to the Blue Sun world meant that most of the foodstuffs were frozen or canned. But even those would be welcomed by the terraforming crews on New Canaan and Lilac. Some unprocessed fruits and vegetables, apples, oranges, potatoes and cabbage, were cheap on Harvest, but would still command high prices on the lonely outpost. 

There were less than half a million people on the planet and its two moons, and only Ugarit was comfortably terraformed. Lilac was just a mining colony, supplying basic raw materials for the unusually difficult work on the ring planet. 

 

All the children were restless. With the cargo bay crammed with boxes and bales, there was little room for them to run and play.  
Like all the crew, Derry and Emma did weight training with Jayne and gymnastics with River. Zoe and River also gave occasional lessons in formal fighting techniques. The captain and the mercenary had decided that their own streetfighting skills could wait until the kids were teenagers.  
But that was lessons and the children needed more imaginative play. Without that they were cranky.

And the baby was hungry. After being bitten once too often, Kaylee decided it was time to wean. While her body adjusted, her breasts were sore and too late she found that Simon had not stocked any prolactin suppressants or even pseudoephedrine to help reduce her milk supply. 

￼

BabyGirl ('Really, Malcolm, we should get her a proper name real soon.') had been eating solids for a few months happily enough until she noticed that her nursing times with Mummy had abruptly stopped. So she cried incessantly, refusing solids, pushing away her sippy cup with the Fruity Oaty Girls logo, making big sad eyes at everyone. If anyone picked her up to comfort her, they soon found damp spots on the front of their shirts where she tried to suckle. And since she had quite advanced motor skills she was quite capable of opening buttoned or zipped tops. 

Jayne's face when BG opened his shirt and latched on to his nipple was a picture.

Weaning the baby was hard on Kaylee too. Her breasts were engorged and sensitive. It was fortunate that the cargo of fresh vegetables included a lot of cabbage. Drawing on advice from her friend Sou-fen, Kaylee was making compresses of chilled cabbage leaves to soothe her sore breasts. But BG's attempts to nurse whenever she was picked up and fury at being refused, hurt her emotionally as well as physically.

River had been managing well for the past couple of months without the care of her brother. Piloting gave her an interest and a way to use her active mind, keeping the ghosts away. She also took some responsibility for the physical education of the children and was training Emma as a pilot, even though herself she had no papers for the job. But Simon had always kept careful records of her hormone levels as a gauge of her stability. Without her brother, her cocktail of medications had slowly become less effective. Forgetting that she had brought Kelly on board would have been a signal to him, but the crew did not understand that as a symptom. If anything they were relieved that perhaps she would be able to forget the horrors that had been visited on her. 

She took to suiting up and spacewalking. The Black had long been a source of comfort for her. After a week or so on the Harvest to New Canaan leg, she was spending ten or more hours a day, tethered to Serenity's skin, bathing in the starlight. 

It was not a happy ship.

Even Zoe usually calm and stoic, was restless. Mostly this meant snapping at Jayne as they moved from stop to stop between Harvest and New Canaan picking up and delivering small cargoes.

Small, but high value and often fragile. Just keeping the fresh fruits and vegetables in condition for over two months was a challenge. Jayne and Mal had built capsule housing for each crop from bamboo and oiled cloth that helped control temperature and humidity, Designed by River and Emma,they kept the apples from rotting the cabbages, the yams from sprouting, the bananas green.  
Still the houses required constant monitoring and Jayne was still upset about losing Rosa-Lucia back on Harvest. Perhaps if this leg had been shorter, he would have had other things to think about. The cargo was not uppermost in his mind. 

‘Like she's allys on her period,' he grumbled. checking humidity levels for the second time that day. ‘Snappin and bitchin. I done this already an it ain't like there ain't no alarm on it.'

In the three weeks between Harvest and the stopover at Dyton Colony off Greenleaf, the only light spot was a new game developed by River. with the gravity turned down, she and the older children would race through the ship swinging from railings, running up walls, leaping from one level to the next. ‘Parker' she called it, explaining she had found vids on the Cortex.  
But after two weeks of noisy fun that terrified Derry's mother and showed Jayne that there were things a fifty kilo girl could do that were almost impossible for a 1.9 metre man no matter how fit , disaster struck. 

Derry, the shortest of the parkers, missed his landing and fell six metres to the floor of the cargo bay, breaking his arm.  
"It's not just a greenstick either, ' said Zoe, back in her old position as ship's medic while Simon and David finished their assignment on Harvest. “This is the real thing. I think I got it right and the dia-x shows it straight, but if it ain't it may have to be rebroken and reset.'

The two mothers were furious with River. They had tried to slow down the game but were just willing to allow it so energy could be burned off. Even Mal bawled her out for lack of judgement.  
River retreated to the bridge and to spending long hours tethered to Serenity's skin, contemplating the Black as she gracefully flew on to her destination.

The men met them at Dyton with the sad news that no trace of Rosa-Lucia had been found in the ruins of the Triangle Shirt Factory. 

The old man who had been rescued by Mal and Jayne had succumbed to smoke inhalation, but somehow he was the only death among those taken out of the smashed windows by the volunteers and their mules.  
The news reports are useless.' said Simon , "But the hospital believes that no more than a hundred were killed by the fire out of the five hundred or more working that night.'  
'Why zat?' asked Zoe.  
'A lot of the workers were slaves or bonded.,' said David.' some have been seen since the fire."  
'Mamma?' asked Emma.  
'They'll change their identities, get their chips removed or replaced with fakes, and move on free, nu er, ' Zoe replied.  
'Expensive,' remarked Mal.  
David smiled, "The Book was removing chips for free on request. I did a few dozen myself.'  
Simon said,'Of course, on every case it was medically necessary. High heat expose can make those chips toxic.' He showed his most charming and innocent smile, holding his husband's hand.  
'But the replacement chips are still real cash money.'  
'Now I would have thought that too, but identity chips were going real cheap. and there wer a lot of them around. From what I hear anyway.'  
‘Like someone, some group, expected a rush on chips?' asked Mal. ‘Huh.’  
‘Maybe Rosie got one of them new chips, then?' asked Jayne.’Maybe she ain't kilt?'  
‘Or maybe she's goin bare. Carry ID is cheaper but the Feds look at it closer.' Mal pointed out.  
‘You still ain't chipped, are you, sir?' asked Zoe.  
'I'll let em check my papers, anytime.'  
'We should get ID for the kids, too, y'know.' Kaylee mused. 

‘They chipped Emma when she was born. I didn't get to object.' Zoe aid. Kaylee touched her friend's hand. The chaos surrounding Emma's birth was still a hot memory.

'So she's dead or she's someone else,' said Jayne. 'An that's the way of it. I'll be in my bunk.'  
‘He really liked her, reckon?' asked Kaylee.  
'Probably longest he's ever spend with a female, wan't crew,' said Zoe.  
'And now he will pine forever for his lost love,' said Emma.  
'You been readin Kaylee's romance books, nu er? Real life ain't like that. Love at first glance, princes on white horses. People come and go. Best you can hope for is your family.'

￼

 

 

SIXTH LEG  
DYTON COLONY  
Inbound- foodstuffs- prepared foods including protein - canned foods  
\- fresh produce and grain  
-herbs and lithium- raw material for medicines  
-linen shirts  
Outbound- homeopathic medicines  
\- counterfeit electronics from dwarf craftsmen  
-knives and axes 

 

"Dyton Colony, armpit of the 'Verse."  
"C'mon, capt'n, We've seen worse. Whitefall, frinstance"  
"Any world that produced a psychotic lowlife like Badger is not goin ta be on my list of attractive tourist destinations, Kaywinnet."  
"But they can produce custom made parts for less than used parts cost most places, ain't that worth a visit?"  
"Other girls like flowers and perfume, how is it you go all mushy over engine parts?"  
"I kin get flowers from Emma’s garden. She's even got tomatoes grown in the hydroponics room. But nuthin can replace a vertical integrator when it rusts out. And ours has become a garden of iron oxide."

Somewhere, Simon had found a tourist guide to Dyton, and persuaded Mal that a sightseeing walk through the ring city that made up Dyton's primary commercial centre would be interesting and educational. Putting on his best grumpy face, Mal collected Kaylee and Derry and strapped on Babygirl in her back carrier for a shopping tour of the colony. Simon and David were planning to stop at the Apothecary Gardens to see what herbal and homeopathic medicines might be available.  
"You know, if a herbal infusion works, we call it medicine." said Simon.  
David laughed, "Some of my ladies prefer the milder effects of homeopathic products."  
"Like belladonna? If the water remembers the medicine, why doesn't it remember all the urine that has been poured into it over the centuries?"  
The spouses continued their bickering as the party crossed Misbegot Bridge .  
"The apothecary I was talking to said in some seasons, ailments can be cured just by breathing the air in the Gardens."  
"That would be the slicker whose stock seemed to be made up of penises from every species on Earth-That-Was?" asked Mal. "I wouldn't go near that feller again less I was wearin a cup."  
The medics found a herbalist whose wares were less embarrassing than David's informant, and stopped to shop for both medicinal and culinary products.  
"See if they have any good hoisin sauce," instructed Kaylee. "And lots of chili peppers to take the bland out of the protein."  
"Now, bao bei, we don't eat that go se so much any more," Mal protested.  
"Nah, but dried peppers keep, and if we can get a good stock here, we may as well."  
The Reynolds family strolled further along their sight seeing route, passing the elaborate bandstand that local legend claimed was actually designed as a decoration for a wedding cake by an architect who was notorious for his inability to measure. Leaving the Gardens near an ancient boozer called the Mortar and Pestle, they turned onto Prouts, then turned left onto Misbegot Bridge to cross what the Dytoners mistakenly called a river.  
The river was so thick with pollution and garbage that it was almost possible to walk on it, although doing so would probably dissolve the walker's shoes.  
The Bridge was wide enough that houses and shops had been built along both sides leaving only the narrowest passage for pedestrians. Kaylee kept her squirmy son firmly by the hand as they passed narrow house facades, many of which had been turned into shops selling pastries and candies, tobacco and sotweed, brummagem tat and fine jewellery.  
As they approached Treacle Mine Road the street widened. On their left was a pleasant building in the Arcadian style, with a plaque that identified it as a Companions' madrassa.  
But the inhabitants of Treacle Mine Road were of a more practical bent than the graceful Companion House would indicate. In the tall buildings that lined the road, and in the basements and sub-basements of those buildings, were the workshops and factories of some of the finest craftsmen in the 'Verse.  
Dyton was originally colonized by convicts, especially when word got around that the terraforming company would pay to reduce sentences for non-violent criminals who were willing to work on the habitation. Many of those convicts had been counterfeiters, not only of money, coin and fiat, but of any high value product that had a ready and ignorant market for cheap knockoffs.  
Kaylee was watching for a craftsman who would be able to turn out the parts she had been unable to find in her thorough winnowing of junkyards in every port they hit.  
"Time is money, capt'n," she explained again."sometimes it's cheaper to pay for the right thing right now, than to try to mod up something' that ain't quite quite."  
Mal just looked stubborn, and  Derry was practicing his own stubborn face. She sighed. These Reynolds men.  
Just before they got to Cable Street, Kaylee found what she was looking for, and left Mal with the children to find a snack in the noisy produce market with its array of possibly edible things on sticks and other Dyton specialties.  
A vendor carrying a tray with small oil burners offered them meat pies.  
"What kind of meat?"  
"Oh, you want the special pies! With mustard!"  
Mal and Derry were nibbling on BBQ dog with sweet chili sauce and discussing what might be in the baker's Spotted Dick when she returned in triumph.  
platinum  
A type of hard currency, typically used on border worlds and for most clandestine dealings. For the purposes of conversion, a credit (see above) converts to platinum on approximately a 4:1 ratio, and a platinum coin converts to paper scrip (1 "dollar") at approximately 10:1. (1 credit = 4 platinum = 40 bills).

"He'll make us a vertical integrator for five platinum and an extra for another two. Says the biggest part of the work is in making the model, then he can turn 'em out easy. But he asked that we let any other Firefly mechanics know that he can make 'em . Which is fine by me. Sou-fen was complaining' that their mechanic always wants new parts and don't know how to make secondhand ones work. I'll send her a wave when we get back to Serenity."  
"Are you hungry, boa bei?" asked Mal, "That street vendor has hot pies, and there are some other things around. Prolly safer things."  
"Oooh! Rollmops!" squealed Kaylee. "i'll get some of those, and look, baked potatoes with refried beans. And how about Sticky Toffee Pudding for afters!"  
"Ain't you the one fussin us all to eat our vegetables? "  
"There's pickled onions in the rollmops, and potatoes is veg. So's beans."  
Kaylee picked up a disposable bamboo bowl and chopsticks with her rollmops, but kept the potato in its little wooden bento box as being too difficult to eat while walking.  
They reached a major junction where The Scours met Easy Street. The Museum of Antiquities of the Guild of Historians was on the corner. Street theatre, always a threat on Dyton, broke out as they passed in the form of a historical re-enactment troupe dodging sedan chairs, hover cabs, and rickshaws while re-enacting one of the skirmishes of the War of Independence that had occurred on Dyton.  
They turned left up Easy Street to Rime Street where a Mr Scant , keeper of monuments, was showing his treasured architectural wonders, built by the same dimensionally challenged architect who had built the bandstand/cake ornament in Apothecary Park.  For six coppers, Derry was allowed to gaze on the Dyton Colossus and the Unification Triumphal Arch, which Mr. Scant, kept in a small cardboard box in his pocket.  
Turning right, they headed upriver along Rime Street from where they looked across to The Butts on the Isle of Gods, then on to Contract Bridge and up Contract Alley onto ancient Filigree Street.  
"We better stop and feed Babygirl. She's getting restless."  
"More important, she seems to have completed digestin her breakfast." sniffed Mal.  
"Baby made a poop! Baby made a poop!" laughed Derry.  
"Right entertainin' if you're eight, and not carryin the little stinker," his father muttered.  
They were outside a pub called The Mended Drum, and Kaylee marched them all inside. She signalled the bartender to serve her men and a quick whisper to the waitress, a very short woman wearing leather skirt and chainmail top who seemed to need a shave, got her instructions on how to find the Ladies.  
When they returned, Mal had a large pewter mug of beer and Derry a glass of something neon and bubbly. Both seemed content. Babygirl and her mother were somewhat shaken by experiencing the Ladies. "Ain't this town never heard of a honeywagon?" she muttered.  
Mal ordered her a beer and to calm her asked for a little something to add to it. "Something fruity, " he specified.  
The waitress looked doubtful. "We've got scumble. That's made with apples? well, mostly apples."

￼

Kaylee was feeding the baby with the potato and beans. "Great. I like cider. That should be fine." She directed Mal to give each of them some of the Sticky Toffee Pudding purchased on the street earlier.  
Probably she should have been more attentive when the waitress brought the beer and shot in treenware mugs.  
When Derry on a sugar rush from the pop and toffee pudding and his giggling mother started trying to harmonize on Browncoat songs Mal had taught them, Mal and his redheaded daughter exchanged old-fashioned looks.  
They took a rickshaw back to the Docks and Serenity.  
Kaylee was able, just, to take possession of the new vertical integrator when the stumpy bearded craftsman delivered it, two days later. But she complained that it was too shiny and had Emma install it because the engine was humming like a planet sized beehive.

While Mal and Kaylee were exploring Dyton Colony, Zoe had found a customer for all the lithium they had purchased on spec at Harvest, following a tip from Simon. The pharmaceutical company was run bay a consortium of Dytonians whose accents remedied Zoe of her Cornish roots. Unlike her they were very short an ran to extravagantly braided red beards. The lead negotiator, a blonde woman who was no taller than eight year old Derry, confirmed their origin.

We'm been miners,underground on Earth -that -was. Tin and sillier mostly, but there was some gold too. Ay, gold is our favourite.'

"Do you buy gold, then?'  
Oh, aye. We'm needs it for buying oursel's.'  
She laughed at Zoe's puzzlement. 'Kids take a lot of raisin. To be a real adult, we pays our parents back. An o'course, that's also part of our marriage covenants.'  
"Umm… of course,' said Zoe. 'And it has to be gold?'  
'traditional.'  
'I may have some gold available. We're carryin a small cargo to Hera for the jewellery trade there, strictly legal.'  
'But some not so much?'  
'It's available if the price is right.'  
Cornishmen are known for their caution and negotiations for the gold took several hours.  
When Mal brought his family back from their sightseeing trip, Jayne was loading Kelly's boxes not a pint sized mule. He raised an eyebrow at Zoe.

Two percent over mid-market. Would've been tow five if I'd sold the legal gold too. Dyton likes to have paperwork. '  
'Se we got ten of mid market up from and we keep twelve of mid-market as sold. An' we don't have to worry about search and seizure . Good job, Zoe.'  
'Yes, sir.'

 

￼

 

REPRINTED WITH UPDATED ILLUSTRATIONS  
12/4/2015  
TITLES IN COPPERPLATE 

SEVENTH LEG

PAQUIN — KAYLEE’S PARENT’S PLACE  
New Melbourne  
Wide open spaces is the hallmark of New Melbourne. Cattle ranching and farming are major industries. The entire planet experienced an economic resurgence in recent years, due to the decline of Hera. Aside from plenty of food, New Melbourne has little to offer and the Alliance largely leaves them alone.  
• Avalon: Not much is known about this little world. It has an erratic orbit which made the terraforming vastly more difficult. Some ventures have been made to inhabit the planet, but thus far it is almost entirely free of occupation. Smugglers have found that suits them just fine, doing their best to deflect any interest in the little world.

The warm sun woke Kaylee as the baby shifted restlessly in her makeshift crib. She slipped out of bed and brought her to the dresser, changed her diaper and slid quietly back into bed while her husband slept on.  
As her daughter nursed, she looked out the window at the day beginning. Her father was already returning from the barn, where he had opened the doors for the cattle to walk to their meadow after milking. He carried a bucket of feed for the chickens which he scattered in their pen.  
She could hear her mother downstairs in the kitchen, and smell coffee from the trees her brother had planted with the money he got instead of a fancy wedding when he married the el-Rahbi girl. The marriage hadn’t worked, but he was doing well with the coffee plantation.  
She shifted her gaze to her husband. He looked so young when he was asleep. Over forty, not much younger than her Daddy, but asleep his angry bitter look was washed away. He snorted and turned towards them, his big hand caressing her thigh.  
The baby was asleep again, too. Kaylee kissed the red hair that was starting to curl as it got longer. Derry had had a brown thatch from the day he was born, but BabyGirl had nothing but ginger fuzz until she was a year old. Both had striking blue eyes though. Their daddy’s legacy, since her own family ran to brown or hazel eyes. The baby yawned, releasing her nipple, and settled in for a nap.  
‘Yeah, leave your mother all lopsided,’ she whispered. Moving carefully so as not to wake Mal, she returned the child to her crib.  
‘Mornin, lil mama.’  
‘Hey. Hope we didn’t wake you. You was deep in it.’  
’No, just started thinking it was time to wake and here you beat me to it.’  
‘You sleep real deep here. Better than on Serenity.’  
‘Do I? Funny, sleeping better away from home.’  
‘Yeah. You don’t wake in the night. Or get up and walk around.’  
‘Wouldn’t be polite in someone else’s home.’  
A breeze stirred the thin cotton curtains. The scent of the farm blew in. ‘That’s nice, ain’t it? All them smells? Grass and fruit blossoms.’  
‘The cow midden, the chicken coop.’  
‘Reminds me of …’ Mal stopped.  
‘Of Shadow? Of your ma’s ranch?’  
‘Reckon.’ More footsteps passed the door to Kaylee’s childhood room. They had pushed two beds together, once used by Kaylee and her older sister, but Mal was too long and had to curl his legs a bit to fit. ‘The smell of coffee too. Ma gave everyone coffee and steamed milk at breakfast. And porridge and congee. And boiled eggs.’  
‘Mum will just do fresh milk with the coffee. I used to love it, sometimes straight from the cow before Daddy made the milking machines. Can’t touch it now, course. I hope the kids don’t get intolerant of milk.’  
‘It’s a good life here.’  
‘The farm keeps us. And Daddy has that little bush lot for retirement. But he just scrapes by with the machine shop. Not enough outworlders needing his help and most of the locals is pretty handy. Also just about as broke as us.’  
‘Not much scope for you.’  
‘Flying is more innerestin. Meeting new folks all the time. Seeing new places.And keeping Serenity in the sky is a challenge.’  
‘She’s a good ship.’  
‘She’s my good old girl.’  
’Near on seventy years she’s been flying. Sturdy.’  
‘We should get up.’  
‘I even like the smell of the manure.’  
‘Member them beeves we moved from Persephone? What a stink that was.’  
‘Just cause they was cooped up and confused. Not really a problem in the open air.’  
‘We should get up soon.’  
‘Yeah. Is she snoring again?’  
There was a knock on the door. ‘Mummy, Capt’n, kin I go fishing with Wray and En-lai?’  
‘We’ll talk at the breakfast table. Have you washed?’  
‘Course! Pits, bum, face, hands,’ as if an eight year old could’t be trusted to keep himself clean.  
‘Go down to breakfast. I’ll be right down.’  
‘We hafta get up.’  
‘I ain’t had my morning kiss yet.’ Which took a few more minutes than planned and left them both a little breathless.  
‘Ready for the day?’  
‘Gotta wash up first. She still napping?’  
‘Can I wash you? ‘  
‘We’re already gonna be the last ones down.’  
Kaylee poured water from the pitcher into the convenient basin. She gave herself a fast sponge bath and tossed on underclothes and a pretty floral dress from the closet. “I haven’t worn this in fifteen years. Look it still fits.”  
Mal still only dressed in his khaki trousers, embraced her as they both faced the dresser mirror. ‘You never change. Still my smiley lil mei mei.’  
‘Mmmph. I’m going down now. If she wakes bring her, if not leave the door open so we can hear her.’

“Mr. Frye’s gotta contract for us, sir.’  
Mal was leaning on the pasture fence, looking at the young steers browsing on the green meadow. Two smaller cows nuzzled their calves and an elderly horse leaned against a tree covered in pink blossoms, scratching.  
‘Peaceful, ain’t it,Zoe? Like nothing ever happened. No war, no Unification, no Alliance.’  
Zoe waited silently.  
‘What kinda contract?’  
‘There’s a biological station bout thirty klicks up the road. Kaylee’s sister-in-law’s sister works there. They got a cargo to take to Paquin.’  
‘Biological?’  
‘I didn’t ask.’

 

Linda Mobuto was tall and slender, with a warm golden skin and black curls. She shrugged the hood of her clean suit off as she entered the reception area of Purple Emperor Biologicals. ‘Have you been offered tea?’ she asked.  
‘Yes, thank you,’ replied Zoe.’ The receptionist asked. I believe it will arrive momentarily.’  
‘Let’s go into my office then. Rand,end in the tea when it arrives.’  
She buzzed them into the inner offices through a different door than the one she had entered from. ‘This is a small enterprise. Pretty hands on with a very specialized workforce.’  
‘What do you do?’  
‘We breed bugs. Insects, spiders, moths and butterflies, mosquitoes.’  
’Skeeters?’  
‘They serve an important niche in the ecosystem. We also breed sterile males, so when yet another outbreak of malaria comes along, we are ready to break the life cycle.’  
Mal nodded. He’d seen how malaria had decimated troops during the Unification War. Without centrally run efforts to contain the outbreaks the results had killed as many as the enemy. And malaria, which had been fought to a standstill thousands of times over the centuries, continued to turn up. Unlike diseases with a short period between infection and death, it simmered quietly in unvaccinated populations, waiting to mutate and spread.  
‘Are mosquitoes the cargo.’  
‘Something much prettier. You’d be carrying Monarch butterflies to ……… And they would be carried as pupae, so there should be no difficulty.’  
’Sounds almost too easy.’  
‘Well, yes. And not too bulky either. We expect that you will be able to deliver with a 97% success rate. That is that 97% of the pupae will be viable on landing. That’s our success rate here at the butterfly farm.’  
‘What might cause the success rate to be lower?’  
‘Not keeping the pupae in the proper conditions of warmth and humidity. But those are basically well within the comfort zone for human beings too. And if the butterflies emerge too soon, they could damage themselves trying to fly in a contained space, or starve if there is no food available.’  
‘How long do they stay as pupae?’  
‘About nine to fourteen days. That’s not too predictable, and we would be loading three day olds — so you’d want to deliver within a week, to be safe.’  
The receptionist knocked and brought in a tray with tea and cups.  
‘This is from the tea plantations on …….. where you will be delivering the butterflies. They spend their winters in those mountains.’  
‘Perhaps we can find a cargo of tea there when we’ve dropped off yours.’

Dr.Mobuto would not have the cargo ready for four more days. She invited Mal and Zoe to visit the laboratories where they grew their crops and was pleased when they asked if they could bring the children. They returned the next day, and while Mal negotiated fees and Zoe discussed the specialized care that might be needed, Kaylee and her mother supervised a visit for Emma, Derry and three of the Frye cousins.  
The kids were enthralled by the tour, and En-lai was particularly proud of being allowed to test a new mosquito repellant, a test that entailed sticking her coated arm into a sealed tube filled with dozens of the pests. That the repellant turned out to be inadequate didn’t seem to bother her, and the lab workers were happy to give her antihistamine cream to soothe the itch. 

Kaylee spent much of her time with her father, helping him with the few jobs he had been able to find and updating him on developments in their field that she had learned and in some cases invented. She was particularly proud of how she had increased the efficiency of Serenity’s HVAC system by using the ship’s grey water as a coolant. 

 

The Fryes had a laissez-faire attitude to what the children got up to. On the whole, if they showed up at meals and didn’t cause too much destruction, they were not watched too closely. Derry joined the younger group happily. They ranged from about four to around ten, boys and girls together, with the older ones sometimes helping the littlest ones join in the play and sometimes spelling off to watch them while the older kids found more complicated games. 

Emma’s long distance relationship with the Frye girls became tighter. They were a quiet well-mannered gang of hellions. And Emma quickly emerged as their leader, abetted by River who fit happily in with the much younger girls. When the girls came up with some fantastically nefarious plan, it was River who filled in the details.  
‘Ay, there's the wonder of the thing! Macavity's not there!’ she would say. 

Jayne spent some time in the little town nearby, where there was a brothel, but mostly he visited Mrs. Frye, helping with household tasks. ‘I think he was well-trained by his own Ma,’ she remarked to Kaylee. ‘He does a nice job with dishwashing and with weeding.’  
‘We don’t need much weeding on Serenity, but he is very thorough about dishes.’ Kaylee mused. ‘Doesn’t stop him from complaining.’  
‘He tells me he does more laundry and dishwashing that anyone else.’  
’No, we all have the same … well, we do use chore tickets when we play Tall Card, and Jayne is not real good at Tall Card.’

Zoe spent a lot of time sunbathing, not realizing that her chosen private spot had been noticed by some of Kaylee’s older brothers and cousins.

Mal went riding. 

 

The live-bio containers for the butterfly pupae were as tall as Jayne and easily two meters square.  
’Twenty can of Butterflies. How many bugs are we carryin?’ he asked.  
’Nearly a million , give or take,’ Purple Emperor’s shipper replied. ‘We sell ‘em by weight.’  
‘Let’s get’m safe to their new home,’said Mal. ‘River take us out of this world.’

 

￼

 

EIGHTH LEG  
GREENLEAF

 

The trip to Greenleaf would be a milk run, and Mal was already on the Cortex, hammering out a contract with the tea planters in the cool equatorial hills. Serenity was purring, running smoothly after the extra pampering she had from Daddy Frye, Kaylee had little to do, so she spent her time chatting with River, playing with the children and painting the last few passenger cabins.  
‘The bunkie needs work too, but we ain’t had nobody looking for a cheap ride in yonks. We kin charge more if the cabins look fancy.’  
She painted the walls a warm blue and was repapering the shoji screen doors. The beds had almost new soy latex foam mattresses, but Kaylee pulled out her serger and made new covers from someif their linen fabric,  
‘I’ll be looking for some cloth for duvet covers too when we land. The linen is good for sheets but too plain.’  
‘Wax merry in mood indigo.’ said River. ‘Fixatives the problem. Nobody has a urinary tract infection though. No need to piss away our money.’  
As often happened, there were blank looks around the dinner table. 

The trip may have been a milk run but landing on Greenleaf was difficult. River had no problem with the actual setdown, but the bureaucracy made Mal testy.  
‘Drug smugglers,’ explained Simon. ‘Greenleaf grows so many plants that are used to produce important drugs. Or very rare drugs. Ones that cannot be synthesized yet. But because too many workers were taking clippings home and growing them on, the producers engineered plants genetically crafted with traceable tags and patented. So now they inspect every ship for contraband.’  
‘But we’re landing!’  
‘Put the fear of God into the potential smugglers, sir. Get us antsy when they don’t need to work too hard at the search. Also they now have a record of what we bring in. And a record of what we sell here.’  
‘So it gets easy to tell if we are flying with more cargo than we declare. Cute.’  
‘I’ll deal with the red tape, sir. You do better with getting an export cargo.’  
Mal knew he was being controlled but realized that Zoe would be more efficient with the customs inspectors than he would be. He left the bridge where he had taken the inspectors’ wave for his own cabin.  
But there he found Kaylee and their children. Since she had her machine out anyway, she was measuring Derry and BabyGirl for new clothes. ‘We got so much cloth it makes sense to make instead of buy, capt’n. I could make you a couple too.’ 

 

They heard a commotion in the cargo bay.  
As they looked down from the catwalk a slurry of orange wings rose up and fluttered around them.  
A customs inspector lay flat on his back on the grilled floor, stunned, possibly unconscious. Falling, he had knocked some of the biocontainers frothier securing ties. One had broken open, scattering bright green pupae like peridots across the floor and through the grates.  
And some of the Monarchs had emerged. The bay seemed full of silk scraps struggling on new wings.  
River stepped in from the bridge, looking solemnly at the chaos. She reached into her topknot pulling out some combs and releasing her waist length hair. Swing her head, she danced down the steps and onto the piled boxes an crates. Were the Monarchs dancing with her or was she dancing with them?  
The baby crowed her delight in the scene. ‘Bud! Bud!” she cried. “Butterfly,’ her mother corrected her softly. 

Jayne was less impressed with the sight. He moved swiftly to th open door and slammed it shut, keeping the butterfly cargo from escaping.  
The noise broke the spell. David got Simon’s red case from the infirmary, while the doctor checked the customs man for concussion. His colleagues gather nearby, clipboards clamped to their bosoms.  
‘Told them not to climb on the cargo.’ Zoe said calmly to Mal. ‘told them they could check from the catwalk.’  
Derry had joined the doctor and his patient. ‘Will have need a cast too, 医生叔叔?’  
‘I don’t think so,’ Simon replied.’But he’s very lucky that he doesn’t.’  
The groggy inspector looked into two pairs of blue eyes. The doctor’s sapphire eyes snapped with annoyance, while the child waved a blue fibreglas cast at him. “Hey, sign my cast, mister? I fell off the cargo, too.’ The inspector groaned and closed his eyes.

Simon shooed the boy away. He gave instruction to the rest of the inspection team. ‘Keep him awake for the next 12 hours. Any nausea or dizziness, take him to ER for a scan. And get him some prescription analgesics, he’s going to be very bruised and sore.’  
the inspectors hurried their fellow out to their van and disappeared.  
‘So he fell?’ Mal asked Zoe.  
‘Yep.’  
‘Tripped on the ropes?’  
‘Looks like.’  
‘He was pert close to a hidey-hole.’  
‘Was he?’  
‘Good work, Zoe. Okay anybody know how to capture butterflies?’

As t developed no one on the crew knew how to capture the escapees. When the customers came to collect their cargo, they just laughed.  
‘don’t worry about it. There are going to be release assign as we ar sure we got full weight. And Dr. Mobutu is reliable as sunrise and sunset. A few hundred more or less won’t make any difference.’  
When they opened the large cargo doors to unload the Purple Emperor cargo, there was a rush of orange wings into the sunshine. All over the dusty industrial waste of the dockyard , spacers and navvies stopped to gaze at the cloud of beauty as it swirled up and away to freedom. 

￼

￼

 

NINTH LEG  
SPACE BAZAAR  
Inbound:  
SPACE BAZAAR  
Inbound- homeopathic medicines  
\- counterfeit electronics from dwarf craftsmen  
-knives and axe  
-Grain , herbs and prepared foods bound for Silverhold.  
-inen cloth and shirts - private cargo

'Remember this place, Simon?' asked Kaylee.  
Simon blushed, listening to the barkers's spiel about alien lifeforms. "I think I insulted you here, right?"  
"Yep, told me I was the only available woman who wasn't married, professional or your sister.'  
"Will you ever forgive me for that?'  
'Hells bells, Si, I forgave you before the sun went down. Or possibly before the day lights were dimmed. I just like teasing. You are such an easy mark.'  
David said, ' Your mouth does go talking, honey. You once told me you'd love me even more if I had no teeth.'  
‘It was a joke! And I was covered in bite marks at the time.'  
'True. You were careful about sitting down for a few days.'  
'Vampire.'  
'Vampyre, please, I am a classy kinda biter.'  
'Keep it in your bunk, boys,' laughed Kaylee. 'We're here for the post.'  
'We got a strange parcel here once too.,' remembered Simon.  
'Yeah,' Kaylee sighed. 'I wonder if Amnon is still postmaster?'  
But the name above the door was S. Majumar, although there was still a mazuzah nailed up by the entrance.  
'Be right with you, darlings!' came a cheerful voice from behind a curtain backing the post office counter.  
The postmaster emerged, swathed in a scarlet and gold sari and with cascades of glittering golden jewelry tinkling every time he moved. He was heavily made up and wore his waist-length hair oiled and curled.  
'Hello, my darlings! What can Dearie do for you today?'  
'Dearie?' asked Kaylee.

￼

DEARIE

 

'Sudir Majumdar, your lovely and charming postmaster. Me.' He looked the three over sharply. 'Just in from the Black, cargo transport. You,' pointing a beautifully manicured finger at Kaylee, 'work with machinery, engineer? mechanic? But you two are too sweet for longshoremen. Although I do love a nice big longshoreman.'  
Simon said,'We're looking for any mail for Serenity out of Persephone. Names would be Reynolds, Frye, Washburne, Chen, Cobb or Tam. I'm Doctor Simon Tam.' He held out his chipped hand as identification.  
Dearie grasped it and turn it over to peer at his palm. 'You're in from Dyton and before that Harvest. Passengers? You work with the Flying Doctors.'  
Kaylee gasped,' You read that on his palm?'  
Dearie laughed and kissed Simon's hand. 'No. But I do have a real paper letter here for the lovely doctor on Flying Doctor letterhead. It just arrived on the Brutus…. and I was sorting when you arrived.'  
There was a mischievous glint in his black eyes. 'Give me a moment and I'll check for more. But it does take a while when I get in a large post. You may be best to return tomorrow.'  
“Any older posts?’ asked David.  
‘Serenity? Under the S…yes, a package for Jayne Cobb; is that your greasemonkey beauty? and a fat envelope for Captain Reynolds: some sort of Registered documents that started on Sihohn and seem to have chased you all over the Verse for nearly a year.’  
‘No, I’m Kaylee Frye. Can I sign for Jayne and for the other papers?’  
‘For Ms. Cobb, just hold your chip to the recorder; but this Registered has to be picked up by Captain Reynolds.’  
Kaylee thought. ‘Does it look like an arrest warrant?’  
Dearie’s laugh tinkled through the post office. ‘Ooh, you spacers are such scamps! It’s not from Justice nor from the Revenue if it comes to that. The return address is Sihohn Madrassa. Is the good Captain planning a second career as a Companion?’

 

Jayne’s package was, as usual, from his mother, the ever-indulgent Radiant Cobb. This time it was a sweater knit in a series of violets and purples and was somewhat too large even for the massive mercenary.  
Although Space Bazaar was kept at a steady 30 degrees, he wore the sweater all the next day, turning redder and sweatier as the hours passed. Kaylee made a capture of him modelling it for his mother. And another of young Derry rising out of it, broken arm held high, since Radiant adored the rambunctious little boy. 

Mal stopped at the post office on his way home from selling off a good portion of the linen cloth they had purchased on Harvest. Opening the document on the spot, his face turned grim, silencing even the expressive postmaster.

Dinner talk was of the days adventures. Jayne got a lot of ribbing about his gift, although the good natured insults basically went over his head. Anything his mama did was perfect in the eyes of Radiant Cobb’s boy.  
Simon and David had spent some time in the drug bazaar, but where the doctor was buying meds to restock his kit, including some new formulas for River, the nurse was trading in the herbal remedies he had bought on Dyton.  
Dyton grew very little, not even enough to feed her population, and certainly not fripperies like herbs for traditional remedies. But they imported, traded and exported on a grand scale and the space left by the offloaded linen was filled by ginger, belladonna, turmeric, various mints, ginseng, pennyroyal, lungwort, digitalis, lily and rose extracts and litre upon litre of exotic oils.  
Kaylee looked very disappointed that there are no cannabinoids on this trip. After her experience with alcoholic beverages that were ‘mostly apples’ she had sworn off drinking forever. At least until the next batch of InterEngine Wine was ready for decanting: in about a week. 

After dinner, still in the ultraviolet garment, Jayne composed a letter of thanks to send home. Careful not to make his path traceable, he would pass the letter with the captures enclosed to a friendly outbound freighter which would post it a few stops away from Space Bazaar. 

Kaylee had put the children to bed, giving BabyGirl a bottle of cow’s milk from the boxes Zoe had added to the kitchen supplies. The tiny redhead glared at her mother and turned her back, sucking on the bottle in a marked manner.  
‘I’m  still the terrible mother, capt’n,’ she reported. ’But at least she took the bottle tonight. I’ll check in on her in half an hour.’  
‘I can do it if you don’t want the stink eye again.’  
‘Oh she’ll be asleep, she just wants me to know that she’s mad at me. ‘  
‘Can’t wait for her to start talking. She’ll have lots to tell us, that one.’  
Kaylee sighed and lay down on the chesterfield. River and Jayne were at the table playing Tall Card. Jayne was winning at the moment because River was building up her store of unwanted chores to dump on him when she got tired of the game. In a dozen years, Jayne had never won a Tall Card wager with River.  
Mal was reading the documents he had received from the Sihohn Madrassa. His face had settled into  grim lines his wife had not seen in years.  
‘A letter from Inara?’  
‘No, well, yes but that’s not… Her letter is just to say goodbye. Would you..?’  
‘No, it was addressed to you. It’s personal. I understand.’  
Kaylee had loved Inara too. Mal may have chosen Kaylee only after Inara had left Serenity to end her days teaching at the Madrassa where she had trained but Kayee was open hearted enough to accept that love and not exclude others. And if her husband had loved another from time to time, well, she had enjoyed sleeping with Simon until their intense affair burned itself out.  She and Mal had been married for nearly ten years now. Simon and David had been together almost from the time David had been assigned by the Flying Doctors and had married a few months ago. 

‘The Housemistress wrote too. The letters were registered because she’s Nara’s executor. She left most of her estate to the kids.’  
‘To Derry and Emma?’  
‘And BabyGirl.  She wants a fund ready for them to get educated. She died before we took up with Perse’ outfit.’  
‘That was real thoughtful.  I don’t think we’ve talked bout educatin the kids. They’re mostly gettin their lessons from us.’  
‘But Emma’s doin real well in the Federal exams. Ahead of her age cohort.’  
‘D’ya think any of the kids’ll go on after their Twelves?’  
‘I was thinking about going to Academy fore the War. Warn’t sure what to do. Agricultural Sciences? Maybe get some theory behind the practicals of ranching and farming. My ma had an academic diploma.’  
‘Simon and David both have qualifications. Zoe?’  
‘Joined the Forces straight after her Twelve. She was ship born and wanted to try livin dirt side for a change. Jayne…I some doubt he’s qualified. Doubt he ever did his Eight, never mind Twelve.’  
‘I liked school. I liked the stories in Languages and History and Social Science. And all the math stuff was real useful when I was helping Daddy in his shop. Didn’t like the biology stuff much, but I did okay on the exams. Got my Twelve, well, mostly.’  
‘There’s another bit. She’s arranged that if any of the kids want it, there’s a full scholarship at the Madrassa, if they want to become Companions.’  
‘Emma’s eleven. Nara told me she started trainin at twelve.’  
Mal stiffened. 'At twelve?'  
‘No. Ceremonies and languages and deportment, music, psychology— lots of psychology. An politics and business and history. Dancin.’

 

￼

‘When does the whore training start?’  
‘Theory at fifteen, practical at eighteen after the Companion’s debut. What? We talked a lot. An that was four years later than I was.’  
‘Not right. And how can a girl choose at twelve?’  
‘Or boy.’  
Mal looked up.  
‘They do train boys as well, bout five percent of Companions, Nara said.’  
‘Well, I ain’t havin with my kids goin to whore school.’  
‘They’d be lots more respectable than us if they do, captain,’ his wife replied. ‘An they can take their training to Academy and do a diploma in Political Science or in Psychology. Nara was considering doin a diploma fore she decided to travel with us.’  
‘She never mentioned.’  
‘She told me after Miranda, after she went back to the Madrassa to teach, after she got sick. She was glad she chose Serenity, Malcolm. She told me her happiest time was when you and she was together.’  
Mal’s face was hard to read. His wife wrapped herself around him. ‘I’m glad you could give her that. She was so shiny, so sweet, so smart,’  
Mal lay back against the chesterfield cushions. Kaylee could see how close to tears he was. 

Zoe was pleased by Inara’s bequest to Emma. She had been surprised that when she had been exiled immediately after her daughter’s birth, Inara had been the baby’s major caregiver. Even on her worst days in prison she had been confident that her friends would love and protect her baby.  
’It was most practical for me to be her foster,’ Inara had explained when they were reunited. ‘Kaylee was busy with her work and with Simon. Simon was busy with Kaylee and was not confident with babies. River might have taken her apart to see how she worked, and Mal …. actually Mal might have done a great job. He did his share, maybe more, of feeding and cuddling. To be fair, so did Jayne, come to think.’  
Zoe had laughed imagining the huge mercenary cuddling her tiny girl. Emma crowed and waved her limbs. ‘Was Jayne good to you, Emma girl?’ The baby looked around at the name. ‘You’re right! She likes him.’  
Inara made her most loving smile. ‘She knows we all love her. Best of all, she went to you immediately, even though the two of you had only a few hours together.’

‘She was a lonely woman,’ Zoe said to Mal and Kaylee.  
‘Inara?’ said Jayne. ‘With all them johns clamourin for to get in her bed?’  
‘She was lonely, Jayne. Perhaps she had a few friends at the Madrassa, but they would be busy too. I hope she knew we were her family.’

Kaylee told the doctor about the bequests. ‘Full scholarships? That’s very generous. But surely the children couldn’t study while on board? They’d be on Sihohn, except for vacations. Even then Serenity might not be able to pick them up depending on jobs.’  
‘And then there’s the whorin practice. Do they stay on Sihnohn for that?’ asked Jayne.  
Simon and Kaylee spoke simultaneously. ‘They graduate…’ ‘It’s not only about…’  
‘Don’t matter,’ said Mal. ‘The kids won’t be join to Companion School.’  
‘Speak for your own, sir,’ said Zoe.’ Emma is old enough to have an opinion.’  
Mal glowered at the first mate. ‘You…’  
‘She ain’t your girl, sir.’  
Mal stamped out of the Commons.

Zoe told Emma about the scholarship and let her research the Madrassa and the Companions’ Guild on the Cortex. The sites emphasized the glamour of the profession and the intellectual training students received. Simon explained the other aspects of the profession. He had, like most young men of his class, had his sexual initiation from a Companion.  
‘She was very good at her job. Between her and your Aunt Kaylee, I almost convinced myself that I was not sly.’  
‘But you married David.’  
‘I love a lot of people, including you and your mother. But Davie is my 心脏和灵魂.  
‘Do you love Jayne?’  
‘Huh. I respect his … talents, and I’m a little afraid of him, and he annoys me not a little. But, yes, I guess I love him.’  
‘As much as me?’  
Simon laughed, ‘Emma, you little minx! You’re too grown up to ask that question honestly. Don’t tease!’  
‘I don’t want a lot of people falling in love with me. I want my 心脏和灵魂. Like momma and Daddy. Like you and David.’

But it was River who helped Emma to decide.  
They were running scenarios on the bridge.  
‘I researched my Academy very thoroughly before persuading my parents to let me go. All that held me on Osiris was Simon, and he was already at MedAcad. Not at home. Asteroid starboard.’  
‘Evading. Oh. I should have gone up not port.’  
‘We’re holed. Oxygen leak. Twenty cc’s per second.’  
‘Time to suit up and spacewalk. Leak at P966/LL40. We can patch it.’  
‘If you’d gone up- look, you would have hit that junkaroo— so good choice.’  
‘I love piloting.’  
‘It’s clean. The numbers work.’  
‘I like going fast.’  
‘Washburne. 速度恶魔.’  
They laughed. Emma told her mother that night she wanted to go to flight school like her father. 

 

Outside of the sale of linen cloth not much business was done at Space Bazaar. But the cloth sale was private, not for Perse’ employers, and Mal had coin to jingle when Zoe found a bargain price on several hundred metres of embroidered silk.  
The deal was brokered by the flamboyant postmaster, Dearie Majumder, who had taken a liking to her when she came by the next day for any unreceived mail. 

Most of the crew’s contacts preferred dive bars as meeting places, but Zoe had arranged to meet Dearie's cloth seller in a family friendly cafeteria.  
To fit in with the customers she had changed from her usual leathers to a dashiki suit with her long hair tied in a turban. In spite of the flowing pants and top, which disguised her holstered mare’s leg pistol, there was no hiding that she was a beautiful woman.

The contact was also a woman, plump and cheerful. She was wearing a sundress that emphasized her considerable boson. The dress may have been chosen to distract a male client, because she was disconcerted to meet Zoe.  
￼

‘It’s my own design,’ she explained. ‘I’m in the fashion industry. Sometimes we get surplus…’  
‘Reckon. We do the job, don’t care much about the rest of the story.’  
‘Dearie will have told you it’s silk? The cloth was hand embroidered for a wedding party, but the whole family was arrested for human trafficking, including the bride. The marriage was called off. No one here will touch it, in case the trial goes in the family’s favour. But if you can take it to Ugarit Moon off New Canaan, there is a luxury market for it.’  
‘Doesn’t seem worth interstellar transport for a few dress lengths.’  
‘There’s five hundred metres in each bale. And there are twenty bales. The decoration is in gold and silver with some jewels, mostly pearls. The family’s original cost was fifty per metre. And only that low because the work was done by slaves.’  
‘Are you going to pay flat rate or a percentage?”  
‘I just want to get shut. This is tying up my capital.’  
The little woman’s  green eyes were calculating. Zoe considered. She doubted that woman had much capital tied up. The goods had probably been looted from the estate, whether by a servant or a constable was unimportant. She might even have been holding the cloth preparatory to making gowns for the wedding party.  
Not likely any warrants were out for it. It was a clean cargo.  
‘Any special handlin needed?’  
‘As long as it stays in the wrapping it shouldn’t get wet. Insect damage is always a possibility, but it’s new fabric.’  
‘Let’s take a look at the bulk of it. Our cargo bay can probably handle it, but we’ve still got a lot of foodstuffs for delivery to New Canaan. If there’s room, we’ll take it on a percentage. Thirty percent on the sale seem reasonable to you?’  
The fashionista dickered a little getting the fee down to twenty five percent, more than Serenity’s usual cut, and high enough to make Zoe suspect that the family was more powerful than was healthy. 

They strolled to the loft where the designer worked. Zoe wished young Derry was available to consult on the space available for the new cargo,  Derry’s knack for geometry  had led River to tutor him in the subject. The maths were fun for the pair,  but most clients were confused by having an eight year old pronounce judgement about cargo space. Especially since his actual reading skills were if anything a little behind his cohort. 

But the bales were compact enough that Zoe’s experience was all that was needed.  
‘I wouldn’t want to correct you but there are twenty three bales here. You said twenty.’  
‘I got those when the silk was delivered. I have no idea what to do with it. Ugly fabric and really hard to cut. I usually make a handbag out of new materials to see how they handle. It’s nasty.’  
Zoe inspected the swatch of fabric that had been partly removed from one of the three extra bales. It took all her practiced stoicism not to cheer.  
‘I could take those too. But I’d have to charge thirty firm on ‘em. The market is gonna be smaller and I might have to haul them further than Ugarit.’  
‘I’d be happy to have the ugly stuff out of my studio. Would you be willing to buy it outright?’  
‘I don’t do personal buying. We do buy outright from time to time, and we do have some cash right now if you are willing. Alliance scrip mostly. That okay?’  
‘I do most of my business in scrip, although I understand many like coin instead.’  
‘Depends on the colour of the market. This would be a straight purchase, receipts an everything.’  
They settled quickly and Zoe promised to pay 1500 for the 1500 metres of ugly fabric on pickup later that afternoon.  
The fabric was certainly ugly, but since it was used to make lightweight and highly effective body armour, looks were much less important that function.  It was hard to cut because it was neographene. Worth 100 in hard coin per metre on any Rim world. 

published to Wordpress Nov 3, 2014  
published to fan fiction.net Nov 20, 2014

￼

TENTH LEG  
NEW CANAAN  
    •    Type: Ringed Planet  
    •    Orbits: Blue Sun  
    •    Surface gravity: 0.9743 G  
    •    Year Terraformed: Ongoing  
    •    Approximate Population: 238,000

 

INBOUND:    Grain , herbs and prepared foods bound for Silverhold.  
                Fine silk for Ugarit - crew on commission  
                Private cargo:herbal medicines, linen cloth, linen shirts, neographene fabric  
                 
OUTBOUND: Grain , herbs and prepared foods bound for Silverhold.  
                  Fine silk for Ugarit - crew on commission  
                Private cargo:herbal medicines, linen cloth, linen shirts, neographene fabric,pineapples

 

‘Up, mummy, up, up!’  
‘No, BabyGirl. You can walk just fine. Go play with Emma. And stay out of the cargo bay, the crew is unloading.’  
‘Day guss.’  
‘Yes, it’s dangerous for a little girl. Somethin will fall down you and kill you. And then capt’n will be annoyed,’ said Kaylee.  
‘Look.’  
‘Yes, he’ll give your cold flat corpse a Look.’  
‘Mummy. Thooth.’  
‘Thooth?’  
B.G. thrust her feet at her mother.  
‘Oh shoes? They’re buttoned just fine. You did a good job.’  
’Thooth. Boo boo.’ Beege gave Kaylee her most ‘pitiful child’ eyes.  
‘Lemme look.’ Kaylee took off one shoe with difficulty, then measured the shoe sole against BG’s foot. ‘Oh, no wonder, those shoes are way too small.’  
‘Has that young’n been growin again?’ Mal had stepped into the galley for a tea break. He picked up his small daughter. ‘Ain’t I told you bout that, Beege? You ain’t supposed ever ta grow up. You gotta be my Baby Girl forever.’ Beege wrapped her arms around her daddy’s neck and kissed him sloppily.  
“Pommis.’  
‘Sentences, Beg. You can make sentences. You’re nearly three.’  
‘I pommis.’  
‘It’s a start. Capt’n, she needs new shoes. These are squashin her feet somethin fierce.’  
‘Ain’t we got any of Derry’s old shoes that’ll do?’  
‘He wore Emma’s shoes mostly an then wore ‘em right out past repair. She needs new ones that fit right. Come to think, I ain’t seen what’s on Derry’s feet lately.’  
‘He feels Serenity,’ murmured River. ‘She feels like home.’  
Kaylee’s blank look cleared as she glanced at River’s bare toes. ‘Well, he can’t go barefoot dirt side.’

Some investigation showed that Derry had no comfortable footwear either. Emma had stopped growing for a bit. At twelve she was only slightly shorter than her 1.3 metre mother. She had workboots for everyday and was proud of her first pair of five cm heels, which put her eye to eye with the Captain. Most of the time though, she wore beaded mocassins she had bought on Turtle Island, while visiting David Chen’s family.

Kaylee rounded up the old baby stroller and with Derry and Beege, headed out past the Federal buildings for the local shopping mall. “I just hope there is a place that sells kids’ shoes. Most of the people round here seen to be terraformin crews. Not many families.’

But behind the mall in a half-circle were a school, a small park, some churches and temples. and a theatre called Family Favourite—Eavesdowne Entertainment Group. ‘Looks like Badger’s family is spreadin,’ Kaylee murmured. They’d already passed a Sweet Sally, part of EEG’s chain of brothels, as they left the Baal dockyard.

￼

And the mall had two shoe stores that carried children’s sizes. Beege got new maryjanes, one pair for now in red and a larger blue pair for growth. She also got a pair of runners with slap fasteners for everyday. She sat quietly, gazing lovingly at her red shoes. Enrapt. Every now and then, as the clerk fitted her brother, she slipped out of her chair and walked daintily to the floor mirror to look at her feet. 

Derry got new steel-toe high laced boots and two pairs of runners, one to grow into. Then he saw a display of high heeled tooled leather cowboy boots. His eyes glazed with lust. ‘Lookit mummy. Ain’t they grand!’  
 Kaylee picked up a pair of turquoise boots. They were well made, finely stitched of good quality leather. When she saw the price tag, she was surprised. They had been discounted again and again.  
The shoe clerk sighed. ‘The price is more than excellent, m’am. We got a real good deal on those in a ‘private’ deal.’ His tone indicated that they had been smuggled cargo. ‘But there’s not much call for boy’s sizes in cowboy boots, so they’re below our cost now.’  
‘Not many cows in the Black,’ said Kaylee.  
‘Mummy, Papa Lee has cows,’ her first-born implored.  
‘Tell you what. This is a good sale for me even without the boots. Buy those and the shoes and I’ll throw in a five-pack of socks for each child.’  
Kaylee thought. ‘Works good. Can the socks for my BabyGirl be those fancy ones?’ she pointed to a package of lace topped ankle socks. ‘So shiny.’  
‘Done, an how about a pack of those, adult size for her mamma as well?’  
Kaylee rewarded the clerk with her smile.

She paid in chipped and traceable Alliance scrip. The less trackable money on board, especially in their own pockets, the better the captain liked it. The coin buried on the Lee property, the product of years of hard scrabble and danger, was not going to be confiscated because of tags. 

She packed most of the parcels and BG, still enraptured by her own feet, into the stroller. Derry insisted on carrying his cowboy boots himself.

‘Let’s go to a restaurant for lunch,’ Kaylee decided. 

Although the sky had been cloudy when they left Serenity, it had cleared and the light of Blue Sun shimmered over the newly terraformed square. Small trees struggled to find stability and the early swathes of ryegrass, alfalfa and pulses chosen as soil enrichment covered what would be meadowland parks in a few years. The planet’s rings arched like a silver rainbow across half the sky. Kaylee led her little family to a brightly painted building that sported large pictures of their menu items, mostly versions of the street food treats available across the ‘Verse. Kaylee noticed the frequent acidic rains that were a byproduct of the planet’s barely started terraforming had already etched the exterior and dimmed the colours.

The restaurant offered a children’s menu of cheap fried foods, but Kaylee chose market vegetable soup, fresh bread and, amazingly, pineapple juice for them all. Even when Kaylee cut up the whole brussels sprout in the soup, Beege spat it out, but she ate all the rest of her meal. As usual, Derry demolished his food, including his sister’s rejected sprout. Both loved the pineapple juice. 

When she returned to the counter for dessert cookies, the clerk told her that the juice was a local product. “We don’t have a canning plant yet, so my uncle brings us the fruit when it’s ripe and we juice it right here.’ Kaylee got the farmer’s wave from his smiling niece, She was pretty sure Mal would like such an unusual cargo, if enough was available. 

When the children had eaten their cookies, sitting by the big windows and watching all the strangers go by, they all went to the washroom under the stairs of the two story building. Derry insisted on going to the Men’s by himself. He also insisted on taking his new boots with him. 

Kaylee parked the stroller with the rest of the parcels outside the door. 

As she monitored BG’s toileting, the building began to shake. A small tremble, then harder and harder. The mirrors cracked and parts of the wallboard fell away from the metal studs.  
Beege screamed as she fell into the commode. Her mother grabbed her, sheltering the half naked toddler with her body. Fear for her boy froze her in place for the long minute of the earthquake. 

When the shaking stopped, she heard Derry’s voice shouting for her from the next room. Beege was clinging to her, holding so tight that Kaylee had her hands free.

The washroom ceiling had collapsed and the door would not open, but there were no dangling live wires or broken water pipes. Kaylee tore at the wallboard separating the Ladies’ from the Mens’. She force a hand into a crack and pulled part of the wall down, but only to the top of the tile running hygienically  half way up the wall. She called out to her son. “Are you hurt, baby? Are there any grownups there?’

‘I’m scared, mummy.’  
‘We all are, Derry honey. Are you hurt? Are you bleeding?’  
‘I got hit by the ceiling, mummy. It hurts a bit. I’m not bleeding though.’  
‘Okay, Derry. Beege and I are fine too. We’ll be fine. There will be rescuers along pert soon. There any places on the walls where you can pull off the wallboard?’  
‘I think so. Should I try?’  
‘Yes, but be careful of any wires you see. Stay right away from those. And don’t scratch yourself on nails or fasteners.’  
She could hear him grunting as he pulled at the walls. The lights went out. She heard Derry scream. Beege clung closer and started to cry.  
“Derry. Derrial. Are you hurt?’  
His voice was shaking. ‘The lights went out mummy…. It’s dark.’  
That’s okay, honey. That means the wires don’t got no electricity.You’re safer now.’  
‘I’m scared.’  
‘It’ll all work out, darlin. The Captain will come for us.’  
‘I still have my boots.’  
‘Good. You take good care of them.’ She thought. ‘Put them on, Derry. You may as well start breaking them in.’  
She could hear no noises from outside the washrooms but the occasional ‘crumph’ as a stressed building fell.  
It had been a good five minutes, she thought and glanced at the time on her comm, which suddenly started buzzing.  
‘Frye!’  
‘Kaywinnet!’ came Mal’s frantic voice.”Where .. you’re … babies…’  
Zoe’s calm voice took over. ‘Are you and the kids okay? Where are you?’  
‘We’re all scared shitless, but no one’s hurt. We’re …uh… we’re behind the Diablo Mall in a restaurant. I don’t remember the name, but it’s yellow and orange and red and there are big windows. Kaylee shuddered wondering what had happened to the people sitting by those windows and to the families walking down the road. ‘We’re in the washrooms under the stairs. Beege is with me, Derry is by himself in the Mens. What’s happening?’

’Seems our Tross reads planets too. She closed up the ship and took off. We were about a hundred metres straight up when the quake hit.  There was a crew of longshoremen aboard and they was yelling no end till we heard bout the quake.’

‘An earthquake? I thought it was just this building.’  
‘No, pretty widespread. An’ pretty strong. Jayne is preppin the hover mule and we’ll be there soon as the Captain gets himself together.’  
‘Rank insubordination, Zoe. I’m snowy cool… Let’s move out,’ he paused. ‘Kaywinnet, I love you.’  
‘I love you too, Malcolm. Come and get us.’

Mal drove the mule,while Jayne rode shotgun. Two of the longshore crew were also aboard, since their families lived near the Mall. They brought crowbars and winches. ‘I never even knew we had a comealong on board,’ said Mal.  
‘Never know when you might need one.’ Jayne had the same focus he had in a fight.  
The longshore crew dropped off at the school, where both had children. The building appeared intact and the janitor was outside by the events sign, slapping up letters that spelled ‘NO ONE HURT’.  
’Smart move that,’ remarked Mal as they stopped outside the restaurant. Kaylee’s GPS showed this was the right building.  
‘We’re here baobei.’  
‘Could you say somethin to Beege. She’s real scared.’  
‘Hey, BabyGirl. Daddy’s here to get you home. Uncle Jayne will help too. You just be my brave girl okay?’  
‘K, daddy.’ Mal could hear her sobs slowing.  
‘Did you buy nice shoes, BabyGirl?’  
There was a fresh howl.  
‘Bad move, capt’n. Our parcels are in the stroller outside the door. Look, Beege, you have your new red shoes on.’  
‘Any chance of talking to Derry?’  
‘He ain’t got a comm. Somethin else for the shopping list.’  
Only Mal and Jayne were at the restaurant.  Mal waved Zoe and learned that rescue crews first concentrated on fires, then on  schools, but that Blue Sun had pulled all its workers  off terraforming. They were all cross-trained as first responders since they worked in such dangerous environments. About ten thousand rescue workers would be spreading out across the earthquake zone.

Shortly one of the longshoremen joined Mal and Jayne. His wife had arrived for their children. “If your lady sez she’s not hurt, she should be okay. These short buildings are good in a strong quake like that one. Long as she wasn’t near a window.’  
‘They’re in the washrooms.’  
‘Those are under the stairs. Built that way a’purpose as quake shelters. They alone?’ He was already testing some of the debris for weight and stability. ‘Oh.’  
A partition, lightly built with steel studs and wallboard shifted, revealing a body, bleeding heavily.

‘Bleedin’s good. She’s alive,’ said Jayne. shifting the partition to reveal more of the woman. He pulled her free revealing a terrified child beneath her, silent and shocked. ’S’okay,kid. Yer mamma’s hurt but she’ll be fine. C’mon over to….’ he saws a grass boulevard across the road. ‘Yer goin there. Yer gonna be quiet an sit with yer ma. We’ll bring her right over. Dong ma?’  
The child nodded, responding to the command in Jayne’s voice. ‘We ain’t got time fer you ta be a whiney lil pisspot, kid. Stay with yer ma. Don’t cry. An if we say jump, jump.’ The  child nodded.  
Mal and the longshoreman carefully removed the woman, who was unconscious and had a badly broken leg, to the boulevard.

Slowly the three men worked their way across the restaurant floor. They could see the stair is still standing but there was a lot of debris in the way.  
Hours passed. No rescue crew had come to the area. ‘They’ll have checked that the school kids is fine…. They’ll be downtown were most of the damage is.’ ventured the longshoreman.

Beege had cried herself out and was asleep. Kaylee and Derry kept up a desultory conversation while trying to break through the wallboard. Their first attempt turned out to be between different studs so the holes didn’t match up. When Kaylee, stronger than she looked from her work on Serenity’s engines and systems, tried to break through the wall on Derry’s side she found it was cement board faced with tile. Derry’s hole revealed pipes blocking the way to the Ladies’.  
‘I’m awful thirsty, mummy,’ he complained. Kaylee could hear that he was close to tears.  
‘There’s water in the taps, sweetie. You don’t need a cup, just scoop it in your hand.’  
‘But I can’t get out of the cubicle, mummy. The walls is too smooth.’  
There ain’t a gap at the bottom of the door?’  
There’s something in front of it.’  
‘Can you slide into the next cubicle?’  
‘There’s only one.’  
‘Okay,’ she thought for a moment then tested the tap on the sink in front of her. ‘Derry, the water is still running. Did you flush the toilet?’  
‘Yes, mummy.’  
‘Is there a tank?’  
‘Yes, mummy.’  
Kaylee sent a prayer of thanks to Jesus, Buddha and Mithra.  
‘Take the top off the tank. The water in there is clean and you can drink it.’  
‘Eeeew!’  
‘Yeah, eeew. But it’s better than the water in the commode.’  
‘I’m not that thirsty, mummy. I can wait till the Captain gets here.’  
‘Okay, Derry. Your sister’s in the Land of Nod.  Why don’t you stretch out and try to sleep too?”  
Kaylee knew he would be crying himself to sleep. At eight , Derry was determined to be manly and macho. He modelled himself on Jayne and David, but mostly on his father. Once he had listed Zoe as one of the men of the crew, leaving out the gentle doctor.  
She checked that Beege was still sleeping, then commed Mal.  
‘The kids is asleep, capt’n. Any idea how much longer?’  
‘We’re about two metres away, darlin. But we’re at the counter and there’s a lot of hurt here. Sharp things, hot things and boilin oil. ‘  
‘Any sign of the counter girl? Long black hair in a back braid?’  
’She got a scald from the tea machine, but nothin too serious. Prolly won’t scar.’  
Kaylee could hear Jayne shouting instructions. ‘You got help at last?’  
’Still just local folks. Rescue crews is downtown.’  
There was a cheer.

‘We just found another group. Looks like they got scratched and bruised is all.’  
‘Beege is still sleepin. I think Derry is too. Gotta choice, get him out first.’  
A few minutes later, light flooded into the dark room. Mal kept into the opening, his arms encircling his wife and baby, who woke with a howl, then burrowed into her daddy’s neck. He led them to the boulevard and returned for his son.

￼

 

Kaylee saw the triage area that had been set up by the neighbours. There were only a dozen people on the boulevard, one lying very still apart from the others, but most were moaning quietly. A few small children, too young to have been safely in the school, sat by wounded adults.  
Mal returned, Derry wound around him. Against all expectations, he was pulling the remains of the stroller. It looked as if all the parcels were still there.

EPILOGUE

After a wave to Zoe, Serenity’s shuttle put down near the triage area. Zoe and David began moving the worst of the casualties aboard. David explained that Simon’s surgical skills had been co-opted by the first responders as soon as he reported in.  
David , as a nurse, and Zoe,with battlefield paramedic training had been allowed to set up an ambulance service using the shuttle.  
On their third trip, Kaylee and the children return to Serenity. The other passengers were two dead and the scalded counter clerk. Mal and Jayne worked nearly another four hours at the restaurant and the mall before being relieved by a Blue Sun crew.

The next day, Zoe and Mal made an inventory of the cargo. All of the goods they had sold on New Canaan had been offloaded and payment completed before the quake. They had not purchased any new cargo yet so there was lots of empty space in the cargo bay.  
Kaylee’s lead on pineapples gave them an interesting cargo for their next stop, New Canaan’s resort moon of Ugarit, where Mal also had a contact interested in shipping some pretty hot jewels.

published to fanficion .net Nov 20, 2014  
published to WordPress Nov 3, 2014

￼

 

ELEVENTH LEG  
UGARIT MOON

    •    Orbits: New Canaan  
    ◦    Orbital pattern: Ugarit -> New Canaan -> Blue Sun -> White Sun  
    ◦    Position: 1st from planet  
    ◦    Orbital Period: 15.02 days  
    •    Year Terraformed: 2435  
    •    Approximate Population: 46,000

INBOUND: Pineapples, gold, linen cloth, embroidered silk, neographene  
OUTBOUND: information, jewels, neographene fabric. embroidered silk, gold

Although the Governor worked on New Canaan, her family really lived on the safer fully terraformed Ugarit Moon. The crew had arranged to sell the last of their cargo of linen cloth and a few lengths of the silk to a tailor who supplied the Governor’s household there. 

The pineapples were a huge hit. The farmer had not been able to advertise his crop adequately or find a shipper. Although the disaster of the earthquake, had not much affected his plantation, he was glad to find a buyer off-world. Simon told Kaylee that she was the perfect sales rep for the pineapples, with her wholesome face, especially since she was always accompanied by Derry and Beege. Kaylee sighed knowing that the children were sticking by her in reaction to their earthquake terror. 

The first hotel Kaylee approached bought all the fruit she had on the mule. They wanted the entire cargo, but Kaylee preferred to offer smaller amounts to other restaurants She was sure that as word of this new rarity got around demand would rise and she could charge more. 

Because the pineapples would be a one off for Serenity, Mal checked Browncoat channels for incoming friends, and was able to notify two ships about the new cargo. ‘Strictly legal, high demand, luxury product. And we’d be helping a farmer to recover from the damage the earthquake did to his homestead.’  
‘And that,’ he told Kaylee, ‘is my good deed done for the day. Mebbee for the year.’  
‘You’re a good man, capt’n. You can’t fool me.’  
‘I have so far, mei mei.’ 

Mal took Kaylee to the Ugarit Casino for dinner and a show, a celebration of life.  
The casino was a resort for the hard driving terraformers who were working on New Canaan, where terraforming had only taken in a small band near the equator. The earthquake they had survived was one sign of the many failures Blue Sun was having on the planet. 

The moon was a source of materials for terraforming, but there were also other materials mined there, including platinum and several gemstones including rubies and sapphires.  
Their private time was interrupted by a mine worker, a middle management type named Radisson Groseillers,who joined them as they ordered dessert.  
‘I only have a few minutes, sorry to interrupt your dinner. I understand you are reliable for unusual jobs.’  
He had  a few stones with him. ‘I don’t want to show them here.’ he said.’ Even the casino restaurant has surveillance.’  
‘Would we have clearances if we take these off-world?’  
‘I will prepare your paperwork personally,’ Groseillers promised.  
‘Visit Serenity tomorrow morning.’ said Mal. Kaylee pressed his leg under the table. ‘Make it early afternoon.’  
‘Could I meet you for lunch? I don’t want to be seen near a ship.’  
They chose a franchise of the same restaurant that had collapsed around Kaylee. Mal was learning that low bars and dive taverns attracted more attention than bright lights and crowds.

Dinner had been a small step up from ship rations, and although the ingredients were about the same with a few fresh vegetables from local farms added, the cooking was excellent. Dessert was a pineapple sundae, which Kaylee had with sorbet rather than ice cream.  
Still she leaned over and licked some of the whipped cream from the dessert off Mal’s upper lip. He grinned. ‘I wonder what would happen if I spread whipped cream all over you.’  
‘It’s only eating dairy that bothers me,’ Kaylee said calmly.’ But you’d have to wash the sheets.’  
‘Why don’t we check into the hotel for the night, skip all the mummy/daddy stuff for a few hours?’  
‘D’ya think they got bathtubs?’  
They did. For two. With bubbles.  
Kaylee started stripping off her clothes as they entered the room.  
‘Wait a minute, darlin,’ Mal said. ‘We got all night to ourselves. Let me unwrap you.’  
‘Make me sound like a Christmas present.’  
‘Ain’t you just.’ His lips were on her nape as he ran his big hands along her sides, up her belly and grasped her breasts.  
‘Mmm.’  
‘I ain’t hurtin you, bao bei?’  
‘No, first time in ages. So glad BabyGirl is finally weaned.’  
’No offence, sweetheart, but let’s not talk about kids tonight?’  
‘Not while you’re doin that to my tits. Umm.’  
He slid her gauzy party dress off her shoulders and kissed each one, pressing against her back.  
’Stockings?’  
‘I … well, I hoped we’d stay over, so I made some treats.’  
He pulled at the thin straps of her brassiere. ‘Pink lace.’  
‘Panties match.’  
He kissed his way down her back, pausing only to remove the panties. Kneeling behind her, he gently bit the curves of her buttocks.  
“Hey!’  
“Tastes even better than pineapple.’  
He slid a finger between her legs and stroked her cunt. She moaned appreciatively.  
‘Aren’t you takin your clothes off, Malcolm? Want me to help?’  
’No. Let me play a bit?’  
She relaxed into his arms. ‘How can I refuse my rescuer anything?’  
She could feel his cock hard against her belly as he turned her and kissed her hungrily. Her lips opened to his, tasting of pineapples.  
He lifted her easily, and walked her to the bed. She wore her bra and a matching garter belt with light pink stockings and high evening sandals. He bent over her, fully dressed, and opened the fly of his pants.  
His cock sprang free, and she grasped it happily. ‘You’re a little dry, Malcolm. Let me…’ And she licked the tip, making him gasp. Now she took as much of his cock into her mouth as she could. He always had been a little too large for this. She pulled his hips closer and swirled her tongue around him. He moaned. ‘Kaywinnet. 圣洁的女人性感的嘴. You are gonna be the death of me.’  
She giggled causing him to moan again at the vibration. She looked up at him. His eyes were wide open and his cheeks red. With a last lascivious suck, she released him.  
‘How else can I thank you for saving me?’  
He was breathing heavily, fighting for control. ‘Just lie back and spread your legs wide. I wanna fuck you so hard …’  
‘I ain’t resistin. Give me you hardest.’  
 He pushed into her and she wrapped her legs, still in their delicate pink stockings, around his waist. He pushed harder and she cried out as she tightened around him. Her clit was throbbing, searching for release as his body stroked around it. She circled her hips and pushed each time he did. His cock was too big for her mouth, but even after two babies, she could still hold him tightly inside her. His lips were in her hair and he was murmuring breathlessly. ‘ 我几乎失去了你。我怎么能住，如果我失去你吗.’  
Her lacy brassiere rubbed against her nipples with each thrust, exciting them and causing waves of joy to spread through her. He was near his climax and was trying to slow down for her. ‘Harder Malcolm, I’m nearly there too.’  
He held her tighter kissing her mouth as he came hot and hard. The feel of his seed brought her to her peak too, and she came gasping.  
They looked deep into each other’s eyes.  
Mal grinned. ‘That’s what I wanted to do the moment we pulled you out of the debris. I wanted to hold you so tight we melted into each other.’  
‘That why you didn’t wanna undress?’  
‘Well, yeah.’  
‘Hope the fancy undies weren’t a distraction, Malcolm.’  
‘Just made you more fuckable, darlin.’  
‘You looked pert fuckable at that moment too, 情人. Take your clothes off. My turn to lead.’  
‘I’ll need…’  
‘My turn. Git nekkid.’  
‘Yes, m’am.’  
He took off his good coat, a light brown wool with darker brown velvet lapels, and dropped it on the floor.  
‘Fold it on the chair. Neatly,’ Kaylee lay on the bed with one knee up and her other leg crossed over it. As he turned back to the bed, Malcolm could see her cunt, still inflamed from orgasm, glistening. He pulled his suspenders off his shoulders.  
‘The tie.’  
He undid the red silk. She held out her hand for it, and stroked it through her fingers as she watched him.  
His white linen shirt was next. As he undid each button, her tongue slipped out between her lips. When he pulled the shirt off, revealing his broad almost hairless chest, her hips moved involuntarily.  
He grinned and turned his back. She moaned disapprovingly. He sat on the bed and slipped off his evening shoes, then his socks. He stood, his pants undone and his cock reanimated and ready for her use.  
’Take off the pants too this time.’  
‘Here I am. What do you want me to do?’  
She scanned the hotel room. ‘Go sit on that chair by the desk.’  
He found the armless chair and sat. She walked over, still sliding the red silk from hand to hand.  
He reached out for her. With him sitting and her high heels, her breasts were just level with his mouth. His tongue darted out to them and she leaned into him. ‘Can I…?’  
‘We should be okay. She’s been weaned for nearly two weeks now.’  
‘I kinda liked the milk sometimes. This is good too.’  
‘Yeah, it was nice, but a lil bit confusin. Anyways, that’s over now.’  
‘I think your tits are bigger than they used to be.’ He sucked on each long nipple and she sighed. 

She sat on his lap, her cunt provocatively just away from his hard cock. His hands on her buttocks pulled her towards him, but she took one hand in her own and tied it to the chair with his red silk tie. ‘My turn, remember?’  She rubbed her mons against his cock, both of them still slick. He could feel her clit hard against his member, rubbing against the sensitive vein.  
She was kissing his face. Forehead, eyelids, eyes. The apples of his cheeks were red with passion and she licked them enjoying the heat on her tongue. He tried to find her lips with his own, but she avoided them, kissing his ears and throat hungrily.  
His cock felt as if it would burst as the slow friction continued, when she lifted herself up and slipped over him in a single stroke, matched his heat with her own, wrapping him tightly and then loosening, adding that motion to the friction as she moved up and down riding him. She came first, gasping and losing control of her legs, slamming down on his lap and burying his cock hard into the depths of her. He pushed in as hard as he could, grunting with the effort, trying to lose himself in her body. He pulled her closer to his chest with his free hand. Resting her head on his broad shoulder, she loosened the silk that restrained his other and he ran his fingers through her long silken hair.  
They rested wrapped together.  
‘Am I the only one feeling a mite cold, bao bei?’  
‘There’s a down comforter on that bed.’

￼

 

They woke with the Ugarit dawn, made spectacular as the rising New Canaan orb showed flashes of scarlet and yellow where volcanoes and other geological occurrences were set off by the terraformers on the surface. The earthquake that had hit Beelzebub had not been part of the planned work, which was as much art as science. From the balcony of their room, they could see new clouds and even some patches of greeny-blue where bodies of water were forming.  
‘It’s beautiful from here,’ said Kaylee.  
Mal pulled the down comforter from the bed and laid it down in front of the open balcony doors. They made love again, quietly and slept. 

Groseillers met Mal and Zoe at the agreed restaurant. If he was surprised to see Mal with a different partner he kept his own counsel.  
This time he had more stones with him. He spread them on his cafeteria tray, hidden by disposable bento boxes and rice paper wrappings.  
Even in such mundane surroundings the jewels glowed. ‘You realize these are not cut stones. They’ve been washed of dirt, so you can get an idea of their quality.’

￼  
‘Wouldn’t know quality from pebbles, frankly.’ said Mal. ‘We ain’t buyers. We carry these for you, it’s a percent of what you expect to get upfront, non-refundable. Then we meet your buyers and negotiate the best price, takin another percentage. Dong ma?’  
‘What percentages are we talking?’  
‘Thirty per cent upfront, and ten percent of what we negotiate.’  
‘My buyer has already agreed on a price. No negotiation will be needed.’  
‘Good. Then we can go to thirty and five.’  
‘I have a list of the stones- on paper- the buyer has a copy that had to be waved and each stone is packaged with a description. So you really don’t have to know much.’  
‘And the description prevents switching,’ said Zoe.  
‘Well, yes,’ Groseillers wilted a little under two steely stares. ‘but that protects you too.’  
‘明白,’ Mal gave his ‘we’re all friends here’ grin, the one that usually meant he was angry and ready for violence.  
Zoe continued. ‘What happens if your buyers don’t turn up or decide to bargain?’  
Groseillers looked shocked. Apparently this had never occurred to him. ‘The jewel business ,it’s handshake territory. If you don’t keep your word, you may as well leave the business. No one will deal with you.’  
‘But that doesn’t apply to stolen goods, reckon?’ said Mal, still smiling. ‘This your first time at the rodeo, son?’  
‘I’ve been working for Corone Mining for fifteen years. All our work and the money goes off -world.’  
‘All we got is our reputation, Radisson,’ said Mal.’ We do the job and we get paid. Don’t worry too much about the rest of the story.’  
‘I’m willing to trust you. Your reputation is …. solid.’  
‘An where did you hear that, I wonder?’  
Groseillers  finished his bubble tea and pushed a small shopping bag over to their side of the table with his foot.  
‘I’ll send a kid over with your fee this afternoon. You have children aboard, I hear?’  
Noncommittal. ‘Kid yours?’  
‘My ten year old. Smart as a whip, writing his Six this year. I figure sending him will look less suspicious.’  
‘Not to the ship,though. There a public park nearby?’

The drop went smoothly. Groseillers’ boy was as efficient as promised, dropping  a backpack by Kaylee as the children played on swings. He stayed to play with the ship kids before wandering off without his pack. Zoe put it on Derry for their return.

There were Company security stations along the road to the ship yard, but a family group passed without attention or comment. 

￼

TWELFTH LEG - UGARIT TO LILAC  
MOONS OF NEW CANAAN  
Inbound- silk, linen cloth, linen shirts, gems, processed foodstuffs, medical raw materials

‘How does that feel now, Derry?’ asked Simon.  
‘Itchy.’  
‘Have a real good scratch and then go have a shower and wash your arm well. Get rid of all the sweat and dead skin cells that built up under the cast.’  
“I really stink, don’t I?’ Derry remarked proudly.  
The doctor laughed. ‘Yes, you do. And you don’t want to offend.’  
‘I was hopin I could keep the cast on til we left Hera.’  
‘You need to do some exercises to get your strength back in that arm. You haven’t been able to use a fork in that hand for weeks, never mind chopsticks.’  
‘But we’ll be see in the crew from Pretty Baby an I wanted Uncle Monty to sign it.’  
‘He prolly wouldn’t, Derry. An then he’d feel bad for disappointin you,’ David explained. To his husband he said, ‘I don’t think any of his father’s pirate colleagues want anythin that could formally tie them together.’  
Derry goggled, ‘Are the purple bellies gonna seize my cast?’  
‘I doubt it. And they’d need a warrant. And I don’t think we’re smuggling anythin at the moment. All strictly legal and accounted for. And finally, if we hide our trail, the purple bellies ain’t smart enough to think of checkin your cast for names.’  
“We have lots of smuggled stuff aboard, David,’ said Derry. ‘The capt’n and Zoe got some real pretty jewels on Ugarit. He was showing them to Mummy. An Zoe has more of that silk than she got paper for. And some of the linen cloth from way back on Silverhold. I dunno about the canned stuff or your stash of medical stuff.’  
‘Haven’t you been told about discussing cargo?’  
‘What happens on Serenity, stays on Serenity, sir.’  
‘That includes discussing cargo. That’s your father’s job. You don’t need to know anything. And the ‘medical stuff’ is all strictly legal.’ said Simon sharply.  
David looked away, avoiding Simon’s eyes.  
‘Anyway,’ continued Simon, ‘ You’re as good as new. Take the rubber ball and squeeze it often to build up your hand and arm muscles. Tomorrow talk to Jayne about some weight lifts, but not today.’  
Derry took the blue fibreglass cast with him.

‘Our cargo is strictly legal, isn’t it, honey?’ asked Simon.  
‘Well, mostly,’ his husband said.  
‘What in the nine arms of Kali are you thinking? We’re on the New Canaan Run to let our names cool off. I really don’t need to be pulled in over some piddling customs declaration.’  
‘It’s well hidden and the payment will be real good.’  
‘You sound like Jayne.’ David stiffened. ‘Tell me what you brought on board and where it is.’  
‘Below the drawers under the bed in River’s old room. Raw opium for a customer on …….’  
‘Then we get rid of it on Hera. Mal would be furious about having illegal drugs on board.’  
‘Some of our legal cargo is opiate based.’  
‘But you have to have known that raw opium is not going to the medical buyers. Your buyers are dealing in the black market. And you don’t get much blacker than opium.’  
David wanted to run after Simon. He rallied now that, of all the crew, Simon was the least willing to accept criminal action as normal.  
He also realized that unlike his other homeopathic purchases, the sticky brown paste could get them in real trouble with the feds. 

Well, he had fifteen weeks to find a buyer before they landed on Hera. And there would be stops before then. 

Perhaps Deadwood would have a buyer. Rim worlds were much more understanding about 'private imports'.

SERENITY CAN ONLY CARRY 4 WEEKS WORTH OF SUPPLIES (?? FUEL) THEREFORE AT LEAST THREE STOPS BETWEEN NEW CANAAN AND HERA

￼

 

THIRTEENTH LEG  
DEADWOOD  
Eight days  
Deadwood  
Population-  
1.57 million

Terraformed-2400

 

Planet-Eighth from Blue Sun , orbited by Haven 

 

Ninth Planet : protostar Burnham  
First from Burnham: Miranda  
Businesses  
• Mining  
• Naturally Grown Produce Farming  
• Ranching  
• Vid Production

 

Inbound- silk, linen cloth, linen shirts, gems, processed foodstuffs, medical raw materials

￼

Deadwood’s capital city had a surprisingly sophisticated spaceport for a Rim planet. But even more surprising there was no noticeable Alliance presence checking incoming or outgoing cargoes.  
Near the spaceport was a gated compound with an ornate wrought iron sign reading 'vIsIon entertaInment'.  
'They make vids here for the Cortex nets,' Sou-fen Macharia told Kaylee as they exchanged gossip in a tea room near the port. Their husbands, Mal and Monty, were deep in discussion of new contracts and prices. Monty and Pretty Baby were doing the New Canaan Run too, but in the opposite direction to Serenity.  
The women had been fast friends since before they had married. Both were mechanics and had met in a scrapyard in Frisco on Regina, Sou-fen's home world. When Mal and Kaylee attended their wedding, they had learned that Sou-fen's family was connected in some firmly unexplained way to the 14K Triad Tong. Pretty Baby had prospered from the shady connection and Mal was careful not to ask too much about the cargoes she carried.  
Kaylee's eyes sparkled at the idea of show business glamour in such a nowhere spot. 'Why here?'  
'Not right sure. They was some films made for Corone Mining here whiles back, ads and recruitment and I reckon the makers thought the climate and landscapes were a good mix. ‘  
Kaylee looked out the tea room windows at the heavily treed mountains. Serenity had flown over a lake district with some large estates on the beaches on their approach to Capital . And while the city itself was barely bigger than a town, there was a good mixture of modern high-rise buildings in sterile squares, shady residential streets and older, slightly shabby retail streets. 'You could find most of what you needed here for a vid, eh?'  
'Well, Deadwood is a full planet. You got tropics and glaciers and oceans and beaches and deserts. Just a matter of getting to em, right? My cousin, Kwame Chen, handles security for one of the vid companies. He says they is working on a new kind of vid, hologrammic. Like 3-D but in the same room, not on a screen.'  
'That could be innerestin. Seen any vedettes around?'  
'Nobody top of the mountain, yet. Seen a few faces that look familiar.'  
'Fly the Black long enough, an yer gonna meet the same faces again and again.'  
'Nah. Nobody I could put a name too, but too good lookin for spacers,' she looked fondly over at her massive husband, whose full beard and flowing hair could not disguise that he was at best comfortable looking. Kaylee said nothing, admiring her own handsome man. 

Zoe and Jayne had visited a weapons dealer, picking up ammunition. Zoe waited outside the shop with their heavy purchases while Jayne went to get the mule from its parking spot. Two men, deep in conversation and gesticulating wildly, approached and the taller one bumped into her.  
Startled, Zoe's hand went to her pistol. The tall man raised his hands. 'My deepest apologies, madame. I was careless almost to blindness. Forgive this errant knave his wayward feet.'  
'And hands.' Zoe said, returning her mare's leg to its holster.  
'And hands,' the tall man said, smiling winsomely. Zoe grunted. She didn't trust winsome.  
The other man, only slightly shorter, bowed. 'Madame, my troublesome friend erred mightily but his fault was not in his stars but in his preoccupation with our converse. Might I too apologize for discombobulating you.' His blue eyes shone with humble apology.  
Zoe smiled politely. 'No harm. Watch your path in future.'  
The two men bowed in unison, both sweeping their hats off and sliding one leg forward gracefully. Zoe very nearly laughed.  
Jayne pulled up in the mule as the men came out of their bow. He looked blankly at the two men, somewhat gaudily dressed for Capital, then turned to Zoe.  
'K, Zo. Let's get this stuff back to the boat.'  
“Can we be of assistance, madame?’  
‘We got it.’  
The taller man had already started to pick up the cloth shopping bag, not expecting it to be filled with steel and lead. He stumbled and Zoe caught him as he lurched into her.  
‘Makin a habit, mister?’  
‘Again my most humble apologies. Would you accept a ticket to our show this evening to make up for our behaviour?’  
‘No need.’  
‘What kinda show?’  
‘Much Ado About Nothing.’ Jayne looked blank again. ‘It’s a classic comedy about love and marriage.’ Still blank. ‘We are with the Sock and Buskin Shakespeare Company out of Paquin.’  
‘Playacting,’ explained Zoe.  
The shorter man pressed a pair of tickets on Zoe, who was enough nonplussed to take them. The men bowed elaborately again and moved on.

‘What ya gonna do with those?’

‘See the play if time allows. Take one of the girls. Kaylee might like some time off.’  
The ammunition packed on the mule, they returned to Serenity.

None of the female crew wanted to go to the theatre that night. Kaylee was happily involved with a tricky upgrade to the ship’s plumbing, Emma was working on an essay for her Level Eight social contracts class. River had had a bad day and was in a drug-induced sleep.  
‘I don’t want to leave her,’ said Simon. ‘Perhaps the captain would attend with you?’  
‘I got calls to make for our next stop, ask Jayne or David.’  
David responded enthusiastically. ‘I love live theatre. There was none really when I was growing up. Never saw a play till I was in nursing school but moving about since I never really have a chance.’  
‘I’m, sorry, honey. We’ll make more plans when River is…’  
“It’s okay, 爸. I never said.’  
‘Geez, quit with the googoo eyes already, ‘ complained Jayne.

David hired a rickshaw to take them to the theatre. The children watched as he gallantly handed Zoe, in a flowing gown and short cape in. 

They were surprised to find that Deadwood actually had a theatre district. Five marquees advertised live or recorded performances from their own Much Ado About Nothing to an All-Girl Revue.  
‘Something for every taste,’ said Zoe.  
David pointed at the broadsheets outside the All-Girl Revue. Half advertised the night’s performance and the others an All-Boy Revue. ‘All tastes.’

Their tickets turned out to be a box quite near the stage. ‘That actor must have felt some apologetic,’ said Zoe, surprised.  
‘Or these expensive seats are harder to sell and having a beautiful woman on display in them is good for business.’  
‘Iphm,’ muttered Zoe. ’That part of your beside manner with your patients?’  
David laughed. ‘Early on, yes. But in the labour room, I need all the goodwill I can get. You’d be amazed how hard an unhappy woman can punch, even during a contraction.’  
Although they had crewed together for several months they did not know each other well. Before the screen came down for advertising, Zoe learned about David’s home world , Turtle Island, which had been heavily settled by North American Indians and worked hard to keep up their important traditions and languages. 

David learned less of Zoe’s background, except that the Alleynes had been traders for generations, first on Earth-that-Was, sailing those oceans, then as spacefarers throughout the ‘Verse.

“We scattered with the War. I saw my brother Alcibides just after we was demobbed. He sold Serenity to the captain.’  
‘Must have been quite a sales pitch.’  
‘Weren’t the ship he wanted us to have. He had a Scarab, bigger and in better shape. But Mal saw that beat-up Firefly and fell in love. ‘Course he was still some shell-shocked at the time.’  
‘But you went along with him?’  
‘No place better to go. No one better to go with.’ Zoe was silent, thinking of the one she had lost, long before Serenity Valley. ‘Mal had the cash and I knew the business. Worked.’  
David knew there was more to the the strange relationship between the captain and his first mate, but the advertising screen had descended and the theatre became too noisy for chat.  
Halfway through the commercials, Zoe stiffened. ‘Good thing we didn’t bring River,’ she said. David was puzzled, but the Fruity Oaty Bars commercial was too loud to ask.  
The screen rose and the performance began. David was entranced by the graceful language, updated from the millenium-old English of Shakespeare. When Dogberry made his appearance, he nudged Zoe.’Older and fatter, but he could be the captain’s cousin.’ David made a capture of the actor as he protested against Conrad’s libels. 

￼

Zoe had a little trouble deciding which actors were the two men who had given them tickets. But at intermission, a card was delivered to the box inviting them backstage for the opening night party

They made a handsome couple as they entered the green room backstage. A waitress gave each a glass of shimmerwine and waved them to the buffet. ‘Dogberry’ was already there, his part having ended well before the denouement of the play. He bowed to Zoe, and gave David a lascivious glance.  
‘Definitely not the captain,’ she murmured.  
David was well worth a second look. Taller than Zoe, his glossy black hair was loose down his back,reaching nearly to his waist. He was as always clear eyed with a fine coppery skin. In a ‘verse where Asian and European heritage dominated, and Zoe’s African features were not uncommon, most people could not identify David’s ancestry. 

￼  
He had complemented Zoe’s evening gown with a fine wool broadcloth suit and had borrowed a silk waistcoat from Simon, that laced up the front allowing room for his broader chest.  
Dogberry asked how they had enjoyed the play, politely moving his glance to Zoe.  
‘Got hard to follow in places. Reckon the customs have changed more than the language.’ she said.  
’We actually use a translation that’s less than a century old. I don’t think anyone would understand the original language at all. For example, at one point, my character wants to explain to Leonato that he is a man to be respected, with roots in the community. He says ‘I wear fine silk vests’ in our version, but in the original he says ‘I have two gowns.’ which would just sound odd. And the pronunciation!’  
‘We travel a lot, and we hear different dialects on every world, even on moons that trade with a larger planetary population,’ said David.  
‘Are you military personnel then?’  
Zoe pressed her foot against David’s. ’No, traders. We’re doing the New Canaan Run; mostly agricultural products.’  
‘Footloose, dear lady,’ said a voice behind her. The actor who had given her the tickets had moved up behind them. Zoe was annoyed with herself for being surprised by his approach. ‘We are travellers ourselves. Indeed, most of us are actually Travellers from Earth that Was.’  
‘Gypsies,’ said Zoe.  
His voice chilled. ’No. The Roma are our friends, or at least, not our enemies, but we Travellers are a different nation,’  
‘Thank you for the tickets, you played Don John, but I don’t believe I know your actual name,’ she said, changing the subject both from the touchy question of Roma versus Traveller and from the business of her crew.  
‘Our names are as changeable as our roles,’ the actor said. ‘Don John is my name while I am playing him.’  
‘Not something to boast about, being the villain of the piece.’  
‘From my point of view, I am the hero, trying to bring justice to an unfair society that ignores me for my birth while praising other no better men that hold a higher social position.’  
David smiled, ’Every man is the hero in his own story.’  
‘Exactly! So every night I work to bring down this unfair society, and every night sadly I fail.’ he signalled the waitress for more wine. ‘But some night, I may win my battle.’  
Zoe laughed.

Dogberry wandered over deliberately, bringing a bottle of shimmer wine.  
‘Top you?’ he enquired archly.  
David proffered his glass. ‘This is very interesting. I’ve never been backstage before.’  
‘Would you care for a tour? Most of the backstage is still lit. Maybe you can raise the curtain?’ Still holding the bottle the two men departed.  
‘Was he saying what I thought?’ asked Zoe.  
‘Probably. He finds a boy in every port, often several.’  
‘Well, he’s a good looking man, but David is married.’  
’Never bothered Joey before.’  
‘And David’s relationships are no business of mine.’  
‘As long as they don’t do it in the road and scare the horses, eh?’  
Conversation drifted after that and Zoe was waiting impatiently when David returned, a little breathless.  
Zoe’s arched eyebrow was enough to make David blush. ‘No, I’m still a faithful husband, although that guy can be pretty beguiling,’ David paused,smiling. ‘But I solved a problem Simon was upset about so I think he’ll forgive me a few kisses.’

“I found a buyer,’ David told Simon in the privacy of their cabin.  
Simon looked relieved.  
‘One of the actors will take the the gum off our hands and there will even be a small profit.’  
‘Actors have money?’  
‘He says so. I have to meet him this afternoon at his rooms,’ David paused. ‘D’you want to come along?’  
‘I want to stay out of this entirely. Buying that stuff was a stupid move on your part.’  
‘Yes, honey, you’ve told me. Several times.  
‘Funny thing is, this guy looks a lot like the captain. They could be brothers, if the captain had a heavier, sly brother.’  
‘Huh. Did you have to use your devastating sex appeal on him to sell the stuff?’  
‘He came to me, Simon! I din’t try anything, even pushed him away when…’  
‘When.’ Flatly.  
‘He kissed me. Which was weird, him so like Mal otherwise. But I told him politely I was married and he politely took his hands out of my pants.’ David kissed Simon’s cheek. ‘Besides you know I like my man small and perfectly formed.’  
‘I am not small, bao bei. I’m above average height. It’s just that all the other men on this ship are behemoths.’  
David captured his mouth and whispered. ‘I’m right about the perfectly formed part though, ain’t I?’  
Simon pushed him away.’Maybe I should come along to protect you from this Reynolds clone.’  
David lay back on the tidy bed.’Yeah, and if we decide an adventure would be fun….it’s up to you. From what I observed , he’s pretty impressive in that department.’  
‘I thought he was getting into your pants?’  
‘Well, I could tell he was very interested. But I think he’s a top.’  
‘Maybe I can change his mind.’  
Simon pulled David’s legs apart and stroked his cock with his own. ‘Or you can bottom for him and I watch.’  
‘You’re the boss, daddy.’  
‘Yes I am, baby boy. And I’ll come along tomorrow just because a daddy takes care of his boy.’

Simon and David barely made it back to the ship the next day before their scheduled takeoff. They missed supper and spent a quiet hour in the commons cuddled together, watching Mal read with the children until he shepherded them off to bed. 

When Mal returned, Simon gave him five hundred platinum. ‘We made a good sale today from the herbal medicine we picked up on Dyton Colony. I apologize for the Alliance scrip.’  
‘We allys need some trackable scrip to make us look respectable. No worries. ‘ He rubbed Simon’s shoulder. ‘Thanks. This is turning out a profitable voyage. The linen cloth and shirts went to a dry goods wholesale outfit and they want more if we can supply it. Your buyer like to be a future contact?’

 

￼

FOURTEENTH leg  
ST ALBANS

 

Inbound from Deadwood: - silk , gems, processed foodstuffs, medical raw materials, civil and industrial parts from Dyton Colony

 

‘We’re heading over to St Alban’s next. Gotta lead on some fine ice wines.’  
’Not a good luck place for us, sir.’  
‘Nowhere is. Our contact is Tracy Smith’s pa. His vineyard had a real good crop the year after we brought Tracy home, but he can’t move it. He distilled some of it too. Says the brandy is real good. Eight years in the cask. We can buy all we want or take the lot on consignment. ‘  
‘Brandy or moonshine, sir?’  
‘He made his own grapes into his own wine and his own wine into his own brandy.’  
’So no papers, then. Sir.’  
‘We won’t get the price we would with certs. But we won’t be paying what we would with cert, neither. We can do a taste test, too.’  
“Kaylee will like that.’  
‘Reckon she’s recovered from that apple cider she tried on Dyton.’  
‘Doc should test it for wood alcohol, too.’  
‘Fair point. that would be some useful paperwork.’  
’So cash or consignment?’  
‘I’m aiming to sell it all on Hera, but I ain’t got a buyer.’  
‘I’ll ask Perse if he knows anyone.’  
Perseus Alleyne was unable to help. His employers did not deal in beverages, which were bulky for the value. He did pass the names of some hoteliers and restauranteurs, but told Mal to keep the company name out of it.

’The Company can’t afford he deal in black market goods. We’d all be fired if that got out.’  
‘I’m your sub, Perse. Your the only one the Company can fire. An this is grey market only. The drink is the real thing just lacking in the paper department. Real eight year old St Albans icewine, bargain prices.’  
Press sighed. ‘Just keep my name out of it.’

 

It was winter on St Alban’s, as usual.  
The moon’s very short hot summers, less than four months above freezing, but those twelve weeks had temperatures in the thirties. Crops grew fast or not at all and the genetically crafted grapes that flourished in the short summer were very high in alcohol-producing sugars. 

Like most of the St Albans farmers Farrell Smith, father to Mal and Zoe’s dead comrade, Tracy, had grown for the local market, the miners and factory workers who could not grow their own fresh produce of afford imports. Smith had concentrated on small fruits, most bush crops that grew on new growth, avoiding losses when fruit bearing son growth froze in band winters. Most farmers sold their supplies cops to the canning and freezing company all owned by Blue Sun, which paid just enough to keep their suppliers coming back.  
Smith had come to grapes when his parish priest asked him to supply grape juice for communions. The fresh juice was unexpectedly popular, quickly finding a secular market which brought it to the attention of other congregations who asked for grape wine for their rituals.  
Smith learned to leave some of his grapes on the line past the first freeze of the winter, which dried the grapes and concentrated the sugars. Icewine was a luxury product, worth the cost of export to more prosperous worlds.  
While Mal and Smith discussed fees and costs, Kaylee and Tracy’s brother Rand waked down to the family graveyard to visit Tracy’s grave.

“Surprised the captain and Ms. Washburne ain’t coming,’ the boy said.’Seems you only knew him for a couple days.’  
‘We had sorta a moment,’Kaylee said,”I mean, nothin come of it, but it coulda…if… well he kinda panicked when the organleggers come after him.’  
‘Organleggers? Why were they after him?’  
Realizing that Mal and Zoe had been vague with the family about the exact circumstances of the trooper’s death, Kaylee gave a brief explanation of the events at Space Bazaar when they had received Tracy’ unresponsive body by maid and were followed by bounty hunters, looking for the precious organs he carried.  
She didn’t mention that Tracy had actually died of Mal’s bullet, fired as the hysterical youngster held her hostage . 

￼

 

They passed an outbuilding on the way back from the cemetery. ‘That’s our distillery,’ Rand explained.’Wanna see?’

Kaylee was always fascinated by new kinds of equipment, and had been making her Inter-Engine Wine almost since she had joined the crew. She accepted the invitation with pleasure.  
Inside the shabby building shone. Tall stainless steel vats gleamed angles tubing sparkled. A steam disinfector purred in a corner, sanitizing glass bottles for the next batch of aged brandy. In contrast a second room held real wooden barrels still aging brandy in strict climate control. 

‘The ones with the red tags is ready to go, but the buy as is older. This’ll the good stuff. The Tracy batch from the year he died.’  
‘Y’all still miss him.’  
‘Mama does, mobbed daddy. I almost don’t remember him. He was in the last there years of the war, with your captan and first mate, right” An he only come home for a bit for he quarrelled with daddy and left again.Then you brought him back in a box. Eight years ago now. I’m twenty so I was three when he left the first time and twelve when he left again.’  
‘I only knew him for a few days,my own self. He had a real ingratiating manner.’  
‘Mmmm. I ain’t gonna speak ill, but Daddy more of less kicked him out both times he left. Reckon he were’nt willin to pull his weight. Allys looking for and easy berth’  
‘As a soldier?’  
“Didn’t say he was smart.’  
Kaylee asked some questions about the distilling equipment and was told the Smiths threw out near ten percent of the brandy they distilled.  
“Well, I say, throw out. It gets sold as cleaning fluid. If somebody drinks it, it won’t kill’em but it’s got lot of fusel oil and other impurities. We could go with less, some distillers only toss one percent, but Daddy is fussy like that. You should try our potato vodka.’

‘This’ll up hair on the soles of your feet,’ boasted Farrell Smith, pouring a glass for Zoe and Mal, ‘And make childbirth a pleasure.’  
Mall tossed back the liquor and coughed as his throat caught fire. ‘What proof is this?’  
“One sixty six, but no worries. It’s so pure you cannot get a handover. Have another?’  
‘No, no. I’d rather take my time. This is a proper sipping drink.’  
We get the water from a glacial spring on our own property. They some minerals in it will do your body good. When you’ve finish that let me give you an taste of my buffalo grass formula.’  
‘You make shine from grass?’ asked Zoe cautiously sipping her own glass.  
“Vodka,’ Farrel corrected.’ Just a few strands in the bottle to give a delicate whisper of llavour. Tastes like the smell of a field ready for harvest.’

How are harvests these days, Mr. Smith?’ asked Mal.  
‘Farrel, please, sergeant. It’s been a little warmer past five years. That’s standard years, our orbit is twelve of those.’  
‘Closer to Red Sun?’  
‘Wobbly axis. St Alban’s has six month with the south hemisphere facing from the sun and eight month facing away repeatin through those twelve years.’  
‘So in twelve standard years you get fourteen summers?’  
‘Ten. But the ten further away is colder. Not famine cold but the Northern Glacier grows near to the equator. That’s why we we make our money in warm years, if we can.’  
‘You know you’d do better on consignment than cash.’  
‘Too much risk. I got school fees for the last two kid and youngest boy is want to go to Academy. We’re hoping for a scholarship.’  
‘Know what you mean. We got three kids on crew and they’re doin good in their level exams.’  
‘Emma’s not innnerested in Academy though. She wants to be a plot like her daddy.’  
‘I thought that lil gal was your pilot?’  
’Now. My husband passed for our girl was born.’  
‘None of us are dead while our names are spoken.’  
Zoe was silent.

 

A small man bounced up to Serenity’s entry, opening the door unannounced and letting in half a blizzard. 

‘ 谁离开他妈的开门？’ shouted Mal. scrambling down the companionway, pistol drawn. Jayne and Zoe were on the catwalk, guns aimed.

‘Hi, sis?’ said Theseus Alleyne. His hands came down as he heard safeties being snapped shut. ‘should I have made an appointment?’  
‘Sorry, 小弟, We had a problem a few yeas back and we normally have all the doors locked.’

Theseus had a peripatetic business, moving form one world to another, one community to another, turning vats of fats and vegetable oils from abattoirs and restaurants into bio-diesel fuel, an important product in a Verse with no petroleum. He had met the crew of Serenity by accident on Lazarus off Heinlein but their paths had not crossed since then. 

By setting up a table in the partially empty cargo bay, Serenity was able to acommdate Theseus, his wife and twins, to dinner that evening.  
The Alleyne children were pleased to meet their barely remembered cousin and all the children were glad of new playmates.  
Arrangements were made for all the children to gather at a petting zoo near the shipyards the next day, a suggestion fromRiver who had been anxious to go ever since she learned of its existence.  
Over many cups of tea, the adults exchanged news, gossip, and tales of their adventures.  
Mal was very taken with Zoe’s younger brother. When they had met briefly before, he had been distracted by caring up legal matters related to the disappearance of a passenger, a homesteader who, it was discovered during the voyage, had impregnated his pre-teen daughter.  
In this more relaxed atmosphere, he found Theseus’ frank manner and entrepreneurial spirit much to his liking.  
‘The farming planets are best for buying stock to make bio-diesel, but they also make their own, so not much market. The biggest market is the terraforming companies. We do a regular run, but we’re always looking for new markets.’  
‘You may find New Canaan needs more biofuel than usual. They had a nasty earthquake that played merry hob with their own plants. And destroyed a lot of crops.’  
‘Was the central plant hurt?’  
‘Hard to tell. The cast didn’t have much info near in and when we left the system it was old news. A quake on a terraformin planet? It’s not news, it’s Tuesday, reckon,’ said Zoe.  
Mal grunted. ‘Our main cargo here is from Perse. You been in touch with him?’  
‘Not really. Not my favourite brother.I was the youngest and always the smallest kid. Good thing I had a big sis to protect me.’  
‘It was running your mouth that mostly got you into trouble,小弟.’  
‘Zoe protected me. Girls get their growth sooner’n boys, so she was bigger than our big brothers at the time. She slapped them into place.’ Theseus grinned. ‘Remember the time I talked Perse and Sock into a spacewalk just before we went into atmo?’  
‘At lest they had enough sense to untether before they got a fiery death.’  
‘They was some mad when Daddy had get a shuttle to pick ‘em up after he figured out where they was.’  
‘Daddy was madder. You hadda hide in the vents until Daddy cooled down.’  
‘I wasn’t hiding, I was stuck.’  
‘Unless you figured a way to use the jakes from the vents, you was hidin.’  
‘I admit it, I have never been a brave man.’  
‘My daddy says a smart man knows enough not to get into spots where bravery is necessary.’ Theseus’ son added.  
‘Yer daddy ain’t a fool , ‘ said Mal.’Verse’d be a safer place in’n more followed that advice.  
The entire crew stared at their captain. “What?’

Theseus had a few suggestions for disposal of the icewine and offered to call ahead to assure the potential customers of Serenity’s bone fides. He scoffed politely at a finder’s fee, but Zoe and her sister in law,more aware of the costs of raising children, quietly made and arrangement for half of one percent of the final price. 

 

￼

 

IN THE BLACK  
DORTMUNDER

 

Cargo- silk , gems, processed foodstuffs, medical raw materials, icewine , brandy  
Mal was contemplating a full cargo bay .  
'We'll have a hard time making a profit on this cargo, sir.'  
'Need to do some tough bargaining with 你的小兄弟 buyers, reckon.'  
'Bring River. She can tell you if the buyers will go higher.'  
'She's right useful, ain't she?'  
'No chance of a repeat cargo though. Not for another decade or more. If we make it that long.'  
"If? Now, c'mon. The Run is going good. We ain't lost money on any cargo yet, this run. We've some good new contacts, strictly legal, and passin on enough info to have guys owing us favours for years. It's all been smooth.'  
'Mebbee that's what worries me, sir.'  
'Well, I reckon we paid our best to Tracy's family. We left a fair chunk of coin on St Alban's.'  
River's voice came on the comm. 'Feds want to talk to the Captain'.  
'Where are they, Tross?'  
'About ten klicks out.'  
Mal sighed, reviewing the status of the cargo. Most legal. 'Tell em I'll be right there. And would someone put the kettle on? Might as well play hospitable.'  
'Whose in hospital?'  
'Jayne, get Doc to check yer ears and don't talk to the nice revenooers.'  
The cortex screen on the bridge was as fuzzy as ever, Kaylee had offered to fix it, but Mal preferred less communication not better.  
'Firefly class 03 Serenity out of Persephone here. I'm Captain Reynolds.'  
'Persephone? Long way from here.'  
'We're doing the New Canaan Run for Business Solutions Unlimited based on Osiris. Our last stop was St. Albans, dropping off agricultural machinery, picking up some produce.'  
'St Albans produces for export? Since when?'  
Mal scowled. A purplebelly who know his area . Must've been working this sector for a while.  
He smiled.' Not much but we got some icewine for a buyer on Hera. Keeps the hold full between larger cargoes. That the bulk of it.' The casks of brandy were much smaller after all.  
The federal agent thought a moment . "Any thing else?'  
'Medicines. Homeopathic remedies, fabric, some refined metals.'  
'The usual mixed cargo.'  
Mal relaxed a little. 'We take on any job we can, officer.'  
'Fine. I'll bring over an inspection crew to look at your paperwork.'  
'We'll put the kettle on.'  
The inspection crew were unarmed, unlike the Serenity crew. The commander, a stout man in late middle age, shook his head.  
'That time has passed, Captain,' he sighed. 'The Verse is more civilized these days.'  
'We been fooled by rogue agents in the past. Well past, mind, but, fool me once…'  
'And the Black is cold and lonely.'  
Mal was silent. When his black dog was on him he found being in space a comfort. Nothing to scratch on his nerve. He had that in common with River, who spent hours tethered to Serenity's skin, gazing into the blessed silence.  
The inspection went quickly. The commander seemed happy when the paperwork aligned the the visible cargo and was disinclined to go searching for hidden contraband. He didn't even look in the crew quarters.  
 'Been travelling long, Captain?' He asked, wrapping a plump hand around his tea and smilingly accepting a mooncake from Kaylee.  
'Bought m'boat in 'eleven, been on the move ever since.'  
I actually meant this trip. It's a long run for a crew with children.'  
'You the truant officer, too?' Jayne asked.  
The plump inspector smiled again. 'No, no. I have kids of my own, But they stay on IAV Dortmunder and the wife and I take alternate shifts.'  
'Dortmunder still patrolling these parts?  
'This is her assigned territory. Personnel changes of course. Me and the wife are among the few who've stuck around. That ship's been our home most of our married life.'  
Mal looked around at the shabby, brightly painted galley, the mismatched chars surrounding the real wood table, the long view through the cargo bay to the mail airlock and the short view to the bright cold light of the infirmary. He grunted in agreement.  
He could see Simon moving about in the infirmary. Emma was in the commons with Derry, taking turns reading aloud . Jayne had disappeared, ofter snatching a few mooncakes and a large mug of tea. Zoe and Kaylee sat with them.  
 "Is Dortmunder nearby?' asked Kaylee.   
'Bout an hour, hour and a half.'   
'I wonder if there would be any chance of trading with yer quartermaster? Serenity is a real good ship, but she's a senior citizen and allys needs tender care.'  
'We're a naval vessel, not a trader,' frowned the inspector. Kaylee's enquiring smile faded. 'But tell you what. Dock and come visit. Even been on an IAV before?'   
'Oh ,yeah, Not zactly for a friendly visit.'   
'Well, as I said, times have changed.'   
'Can we go, capt'n?' Kaylee asked when the inspector had left.   
'Visit a navy ship on purpose, not really in the plan, Kaylee.'   
'We got nuthin in particular to worry about this trip. And it could be eddycational for the kids.'   
'And you wanna see the engine room, doncha?"   
'Oooh, yeah,' she kissed him thoroughly,' Please, Malcolm?'  
   
The quartermaster had some extra fuel cells to trade and wanted some of the baled cannabis that was among the pharmaceuticals, since the Lunar New Year was approaching on the Dortmunder calendar. She was happy to introduce Kaylee to the Chief Engineer, a skinny redheaded person named Pat.   
Derry was just tagging along, but Kaylee and Emma were fascinated by the huge engines and climate control systems.   
'There is a population of over forty thousand aboard at any time,' Pat explained in a high pitched voice. 'that's mostly naval officers and crew, but we do have family quarters and guest sites for visiting personnel. We had the King of Londinium on board three year back.'   
'Was he wearing his crown?' asked Derry.   
'No, but he had the sandiest uniform you ever did see. Scarlet jacket with gold embroidery everywhere and so many medals you'd think he won the War all by his own self. The full whoop de do. '  
Pat's high voice prattled on, explaining how the HVAC system was decentralized to each of the towers of the ship,a huge edifice that could never land planetside.   
But there was something wrong with the engines. A tiny irregularity that irritated her mechanic's soul. It wasn't every time, but there was a clunk sound occasionally where there should be a click. Kaylee started a count. On her third , she decided it was the twenty-seventh beat each forty second repetition.   
The tour group was at the top of an immense vat of water being purified with precipitates before passing into the distilling chamber. Pat had given Derry a tiny nugget of alum to taste and they were laughing at his grimaces at the sourness of it.   
She touched Pat's arm, causing him (her?) to flinch. 'Did y'a hear that?' she asked.   
'What?' Pat replied, stepping out of her reach . Kaylee explained what she was hearing. Pat looked dubious, but slid down a pole and stalked over to a bank of gauges.   
'I'm not seeing any adverse reports.'   
'It may be somethin or nuthin.'   
Pat waved them silent, head cocked, listening. 'Oh ,yes, I think.' Another tense minute. 'Yes, sort of a clunk noise?'   
'That's what I'm hearing"   
Pat commend to the engineering wardroom. 'Send up that ensign. The kid who arrived yesterday.'   
Smiling at Kaylee, 'My ears get tired. It's pretty noisy down here.'   
The ensign, barely out of her teens, swung around a corner and saluted smartly, 'Reporting, ma'm.'   
Pat glared, 'Sir, youngster,' Kaylee was glad of the confirmation until Pat continued, 'When we're on duty.' Crap. 'Listen carefully to the sounds.'   
The blushing ensign frowned in concentration. After a moment she said, 'What am I listening for …. sir?'   
'Irregularities.'   
The ensign looked puzzled, 'I'm not sure what's supposed to be regular, sir. There is a beat every minute in that gauge.'   
Pat looked at the array. 'Second from the left?'   
'Third,sir, It makes a slightly different sound at about thirty- forty seconds.'   
' 大象小便 . That's the gauge for the portside sewers. It's reporting everything is fine… but…' Pat reached for the comm again. 'Stevie! You the PSD?'   
'Yeah, ?'   
'Check that everything is under control? I'm nor real sure the gauges is giving us correct info.'   
'That means opening the stink vault, Patsy You'll owe me on this.'   
The comm snapped off. Pat shook ginger curls at the visitors. 'I hope there no problem, but that gauge reports the amount of methane coming off one of the stage vaults, we drain it off for fuel, of course, but if it builds too much pressure...'   
'Explosion?' asked Derry excitedly.   
'A real and veritable shit shower.'   
Stevie's voice came over the comm.   
'Shit!'   
'No need for language, Stevie.'   
'No, really the methane blew the lid off the vault. We're covered in .. feces .. um .. blackwater… aw, shit, just shit!'   
While the adults were distracted, Derry plugged his new comm into the system and pulled out everything from Pat's first call through the loosening of the vault cap and subsequent explosion of sewage. The faces on the cleanup and repair crew were hilarious, especially to a small boy.   
The ensign was sent to Stores and returned with a replacement gauge.   
'What happens to the old gauge?' asked Kaylee.   
'It goes to the recycling centre and gets sold off with more scrap when we have enough.''   
Kaylee was allowed to take the broken gauge home as a souvenir and thanks for her early warning. Emma as a someday pilot, had been given a short tour of the bridge. She and River were discussing possible upgrades to Serenity's equipment . Mal suspected that River was learning more about the naval vessel than Emma knew she knew. Information that might come in handy.  
 Mal was amused and disappointed to learn that Kaylee had prevented a worse incident on IVF Dortmunder than an urgent cleanup.    
‘Would purely have loved to see them purple bellies cover in crap.’ Which was when Derry produced his comm and showed the events in the portside sewer on the commons vidscreen. 

 

￼

To here is on WordPress May 2015

 

FIFTEENTH LEG  
NEW MELBOURNE  
"Only thing you're gonna find in New Melbourne is fish and fish related activities. Unless you got an overwhelming urge to gut sturgeon -- and who hasn't, occasionally"  
― Mal, to Inara, in "Objects in Space"  
Over ninety-seven percent of New Melbourne is covered by ocean. There are islands of various sizes around the world, but no land mass large enough to be classified as a continent. It was therefore chosen as a place to test out terraforming techniques for such water-heavy worlds. New terraforming rigs were developed and thousands upon thousands of species of marine life were cultivated in different regions. One particularly successful effort was the creation of the Great Kelp Forest, an ecosystem which covers nearly five million square kilometers and is still growing.  
The planet is known today for its fishing-oriented economy and for its massive water processing plants. Some of the islands are large enough to support farming or ranching, and this is where most communities are established. Each island has developed its own culture, shaped by the climate and the kind of fishing and other resources available in that area. Monterey sits on the edge of the Great Kelp Forest and is almost completely surrounded by it, making it the primary site for kelp harvesting and for diving expeditions. The port of New Melbourne is laid back but also hard working, and its island is known to have some of the best surfing in the 'verse. The planet is a frequent layover point between the Core and other worlds in the Red Sun system. — SerenityMUSH

 

Inbound- silk linen cloth. linen shirts, gems processed foodstuffs, medical raw materials, icewine, brandy ,embroidered silk, neographene

￼  
NEW MELBOURNE

‘Diamond Molly, sir?’  
‘That’s the name your brother gave me.’  
‘And what do we know about her/‘  
‘River and the kids searched the Cortex. She’s got a respectable front anyways. Imports all sorts of luxury goods. Sells only wholesale but River got a peek at one of her client accounts and their client accounts.’  
‘A peek? When did she learn to hack the Cortex?’  
‘Not rightly sure, but she is a ruttin genius and she had a sleepover, the one with the waist length blue hair, back on Muir? Think he was a Cortex designer. Reckon she picked ‘im clean. He looks a little dazed at breakfast.’  
‘They always do, sir.’

Mal had spoke with Diamond Molly’s office manager so when the and Jayne arrived at a brightly painted industrial park with samples of the icewine and brandy on the mule, they were quickly ushered into a small conference room in the lowrise orange office building.

A slight girl, barely into her teens, was setting out small glasses, crackers, sweet cakes, and fruit. She started as they entered.  
‘It’s okay, Pippa, Molly won’t be here for a few more minutes, finish up.’  
The girl signed softly and laid out fine cotton napkins, then plugged in a kettle, filling an elegant silver teapot with tealeaves and setting out Londinium style teacups with saucers, along with milk, sugar , cream and lemon.  
She look around, nodded to herself in satisfaction and slipped out the door. The manager indicated chairs around a laminated bamboo table. The three men sat in silence.  
The teenager opened a different door. ‘Diamond Molly,’ she murmured as the men rose.

￼

 

‘YoSaffBridge!’ exclaimed Mal.’Or is it Freda or Melissa?/ Are you Diamond Molly too?’  
‘Hi, hubs,’ breathed Saffron, bending into him as if she expects a kiss. Mal rapidly stepped back, bumping into his chair. The manager looked confused.  
‘No problem, Outerbridge,’ Saffron said. ‘The captain and I have known each other for ages. And Jayne , how nice to see you again.’  
Jayne licked his lips.  
‘Please, gentlemen, be seated.,’ said Saffron., completely in control of the situation. ‘I bought the name Diamond Molly when I took over the company.’  
Mal opened his mouth, ready to ask what had happened to the original Molly, but remember he was here to get paid and ‘Molly’ had made the most profitable offer.  
‘We left you on Hera what? two year ago? with your husband.’  
‘Ex, Mal, but still a friend, just like us.’  
Mal reminded himself about getting paid and grunted. Jayne was staring a Saffron’s impressive bosom and grinning. Mal kicked his ankle surreptisiously under the table.  
‘You’ll want to taste the icewine?’  
‘Of course. I have a reputation here for providing only the best quality.’  
At Mal’s nod, Jayne unscrewed the cap of the slender bottle, pouring small servings for all four. They sipped and Saffron nodded.  
‘That’s the stuff, all right. Did you bring all the wine bottled and labelled?’  
‘Yes, of course. Duty paid and everything.’  
‘Some suppliers will provide casks and labels of so we can bottle ourselves.’  
‘That would be cheaper to transport, but how would the customer know what he was buying?’  
‘As I say, I have a reputation. Also it allows me to use a fancier bottle for the discriminating buyer.’  
Jayne snorted. ’Same stuff, higher price.’  
Saffron glanced sideways at him. ‘Selling the sizzle.’ She smiled and Jayne gulped down the rest of the wine in his cup.  
‘We do have another product. We’ve got good paperwork, but it wasn’t bottled on site.’  
Saffron looked interested.  
‘The same grower makes a brandy he thinks could give New Canaan a run for its money. And with the trouble on New Canaan, there will be a shortage in that market.’  
’Trouble?’  
‘They was a bad quake there. Kaylee and the kids got caught in it.’ Mal’s blue eyes darkened at the memory.  
‘Your kids, Mal? Are you a widower now?’  
Mal gave her a black look. ‘No thank you for your concern.’  
‘There hasn’t been anything on the casts about an earthquake on New Canaan.’  
‘A quake on a world still being terraformed ain’t really news. But it for sure happened. Might mean New Canaan brandy will be hard to come by for a few years while the farmers and winemakers rebuild.’  
‘And you have a substitute?’  
‘From St Albans. They’s only one maker but he does the icewine so there’s your selling point. ‘ Mal nodded to Jayne, who pulled a thermos out of his bag.  
’No bottles?’  
‘Just casks. The paperwork is a little sketchy, but we got it tested for purity and have signed documentation. High proof too. ‘  
Saffron rang a tiny bell, summoning the teenage servant.  
‘Another set of glasses, balloons.’  
The little maid scurried off, returning with larger glasses.  
‘Balloons, Pippa,’ said Saffron, sharply.  
The girl looked terrified. ‘I… don’t..’  
‘These are fine,’ said Mal.  
Saffron’s ruby lips thinned. ‘All right. But you, ‘ addressing the girl,’ will have a lesson tonight.’ The girl gulped.  
Mal was regretting his choice of customer.  
Jayne poured a sample the St Albans brandy for each of them, his own slightly larger than the others.  
’There’s a ginger bouquet,’ remarked the office manager.’Unusual.’  
‘You’ll taste smoke too, ‘Mal replied, having been coached by Farrell Smith.’ And honey and roses, as an aftertaste.’  
‘It’s right tasty,’ said Jayne.’Reminds me of hot nights with hotter women.’  
Saffron crossed her legs, exposing her pale thighs to the merc. He grinned wider and finished his brandy in a gulp.  
‘Jayne, you should make a good thing like this last,’ said Saffron.’I know you can do that.’She poured him another generous portion.  
Mal noticed the byplay but decided ignoring it was the best strategy. Diamond Molly had made the best offer by far.  
‘We’ve settled on the icewine already, so what are you thinking about the brandy?’  
‘It’s got no background. I’ll have to set up a publicity campaign to get the best price. Those don’t come cheap. And you say there won’t be more?’  
‘St Albans is headed into their winter orbit. They ain’t gonna have much in the way of crops for a good six year. Then there’s the lag for aging. Easy a dozen years to the next batch.’  
‘But then six years when they can produce, if I want to play a long game. I have to keep a scarce product in the public eye for over a decade. Expensive.’  
‘I can give you a contact info for the distillery. Cut your cost by during direct.’  
‘Mal, I know who the distiller is. The same as makes the icewine, obviously. and his name is on those bottles. Name your figure.’  
Mal had planned to double his expected price as a first offer to Diamond Molly, but he was dealing with Saffron, for whom double-dealing was as easy as breathing, and had decided to triple his first price. Now he named quadruple his expected payment and Saffron countered with a quarter of that, what he originally had intended to accept.  
He hid his amusement and they spent some time going back an forth on price, quantity and exclusivity. At last they settled just under the tripled price for the entire shipment of brandy.

‘One other thing, ‘ said Mal.’ I’ve take a fancy to yer girl there. Throw in her contract and we got a deal.’  
Saffron laughed.’ You like them young, do you, hubs? She’s barely fifteen. She’s not bed broke either. She cries a lot, no technique at all. And she’s an awful maid, quite stupid really.’  
The girl was looking terrified.  
‘All right, I’ll transfer the icewine payment to your bank and pay the brandy in federal fiat. Outerbridge will prepare the labour contract sale. Pippa, get your things and meet Mr. Outerbridge in this office.’  
The girl, openly weeping, ran from the room.  
Saffron rose gracefully from the table, running her hand along Jayne’s thigh and over his cock as she did.  
‘Nice to do business with your again, hubby. Three times I’ve put a good profit in your hands now. Maybe next time I’ll be the lucky one. ‘ She swayed out of the room.  
‘Let’s go, Jayne.’  
‘Gimmee a minute, Mal? I gotta adjust a few things.’

￼

PIPPA

Outerbridge was very efficient about payment and within twenty minutes, they were in the mule, with the trembling girl, who clutched a shabby backpack.  
Mal frowned at her, and she started to cry again.  
‘How ya gonna explain this one ta Kaylee, Mal? She ain’t gonna appreciate you bedding her.’  
‘Not leaving her with that bitch. Scared little thing.’  
‘Kin I have her then?’  
‘She’s a human person, Jayne. We’ve spoke about this afore.’  
‘Whatcha gonna do about her then?’  
‘Well, she can help with the kids and the cooking for the time being. You done yer schooling, girl?’  
“I wrote my Four, master.’  
‘Not master, captain. How old are you?’  
‘Not sure, ma… captain. Bout fourteen.’  
‘You shoulda done yer Six by now.’  
None of my owners were payin for school, captain.’  
‘Owners?’  
‘I got sold on when I was bout ten. Nobody wanted me when daddy died.’  
‘I thought we was just buying out your contract.’  
‘No mas… captain. I’m enslaved.’  
The men exchanged looks.  
‘Huh,’ said Mal.

‘Want to explain the child, sir?’  
‘Working on what to tell Kaylee first.’

Kaylee was happy to have a new face on board. Relieved, Mal commed Pippa’s papers to the Labour Board and manumitted her, paying from Perse’ bank account.  
‘There’s yer freedom papers fresh from the printer. You can get the tattoo updated any time by showin those.’  
Pippa took the thin rice paper sheets. ‘What do I do now, Captain Reynolds?’  
‘Well, whatever you want. You’re free.’  
Pippa started to cry. ‘What’s the matter, lil girl?’  
‘A spoonful of sugar leads to diabetes.’ said River.  
“Look, we’re going to be leaving at the beginning of the week. You can stay on board til then. Guess you better start looking for work. What can you do?’  
‘Nothing really.’  
’Saffron…Molly had you serving drinks. You could try restaurants, bars too.’  
‘I was just starting on that. I … really don’t know how.’  
‘Were you a chambermaid?’ asked Kaylee. ‘Makin beds, sweeping, vacuuming?’  
‘The housekeeper didn’t want me on cleaning any more. Madame Molly took me off that cause I was so bad at it. She said she had to remake her bed after I got my hands on it.’  
‘Factory work.’  
‘I haven’t worked in a factory. Do you need qualifications?’  
Jayne said,’ For a lotta factory work, yeah. But mostly they train you.’  
Pippa started crying again. 

River was the only crew member who had no planetside responsibilities, so she volunteered to take the teenager around to the Labour Bureau and check out job postings.

At the end of the day, the two girls had no success. ’There were a few openings. One said waitress but we were told she’d be spreading for the customers too. The other two gave her a written application and she couldn’t fill it in.’

Emma went with Zoe to her appointment at the Mercer’s Hall the next day, leaving Kaylee, who was going to an auction with Mal, short of child care. She asked Pippa to give the kids lunch , change the baby as needed and remind her to use the potty, and to take out some ingredients for dinner, since Pippa , weeping, told them she didn’t know how to cook.  
‘Lunch is just heating up some of the soup in the chillybox and making sandwiches.’  
But when she returned Beege had removed her own full diaper and was playing bare bottomed and alone in the cargo bay. Pippa had cut herself making sandwiches and Derry was locked in his bunk.  
‘He was naughty so I slapped him and he ran into his bunk and I locked it.’  
She had forgotten to take anything out for dinner. Mal sent her to her cabin to keep her from the wrath of Kaylee.  
’So useless around the house, pert close to illiterate, can’t be trusted with children. What are we going to do with her?’  
‘Don’t have to do nuthin,’ said Jayne. ‘You bought her and freed her. She’s cost us money.’  
‘Yeah, we took her from something she knew and understood. We got responsibilities.’  
‘Shoulda sold her to a house. The young ones kin make good coin, buy herself free in no time and she’d have a skill.’  
Mal looked at him blue-eyed.  
‘Yeah, yeah.’ said Jayne.’Coulda , shoulda, woulda. Too late now.’  
‘We don’t mess with slavery, ‘ growled Mal.  
‘If she stays here alone, she’ll be back in bondage in two shakes, sir. Either she’ll sell her contract of she’ll get grabbed. And slavers ain’t too picky about gentle care of their stock. ‘  
‘She needs a mamma,’ said Kaylee. ‘Someone to teach her. She ain’t had no parents since she was ten.’  
‘Are you sayin we should keep her?’ asked Mal.  
‘I’m not wanting anyone on board who slaps my kid,’ said Kaylee.  
‘So where do you reckon we’d find her some parents?’  
’My Ma says she’s a mite lonely since Mattie passed,’ said Jayne.  
‘It’s near on a week out of our way, but yeah, wave yer ma and ask if she would take her on.’

 

￼

 

SIXTEENTH LEG  
Muir / PROSPECT RIDGE

Inbound - silk, linen cloth. linen shirts, gems, processed foodstuffs including dried and canned fish, dried seaweed.  
Outbound- as above plus fine finished jewelry, butter, quinoa, buckwheat

Pippa spent much of the next few days crying. She cried when Kaylee bawled her out for her neglect of the children. She cried when Emma tried to show her how to tend the hydroponic garden. She cried because she was offended when Derry offered to help her with her reading. She was terrified of Zoe, sobbing whenever she caught here cool gaze on her. She whimpered when Mal asked what she was up to. When Simon asked her to come to the infirmary for a checkup, believing that it was unlikely she had ever been inoculated against common illnesses like damplung, influenza, or aids, she gasped in fear.  
And Jayne.  
She was fascinated by the big merc. She hid on the catwalk and watched him working out on the weights. She sat across from him at table, sneaking glances from under her lashes. When Jayne emerged from the shower room, clad only in a towel and thongs, she was standing in the corridor.  
‘Looks like you got a follower,’ remarked Zoe, as they checked stock for possible sale at Prospect Ridge near the home of Radiant Cobb .  
‘Too young. And too soggy, ‘ said Jayne.’ Kinda a pill, all round.’  
They heard a small gasp from behind some crates. There was a sound of running footsteps.  
‘Shit, we’re gonna get even more whimpering the night.’

The next morning they put down Serenity at Prospect Ridge, a few kilometres from the Cobb place. Prospect Ridge was a fairly prosperous town of some 15,000, mostly Asian in descent, but with the occasional blonde or redhead popping up as the generations had intermarried. The economy was based on some small factories, mostly making small engines and specialized machine parts. Kaylee was looking forward to happy hours spent in the company of other mechanics. She had commend ahead to arrange a supper meeting with old friends.  
‘That woman got more friends in more worlds, than a cat got fleas,’ grumbled Mal, who had been looking forward to a night in town and a big hotel bed. 

The entire crew piled into a shuttle for their visit with Ma Cobb. Setting down on a gravelled patch near the house, they saw the old lady waiting on her porch.  
Jayne was first out of the shuttle and rushed to hug his ma. She reached up and patted his cheek, smiling gently, her feet half a metre off the floor.  
When her adoring son allowed her back on her feet, she invited the crew in, exclaiming how the children had grown. Pippa got a skeptical look, but managed to stay calm, although she was red-eyed.  
Although it was morning, ship time, it was late afternoon dirtside, and Radiant had baked handpies, spinach, apple and meat, and raisin scones for the crew along with strong coffee and buttermilk from her cow, Maybelline. 

The milk, her butter , and eggs from her hens, supported Ma Cobb, along with a small pension from her late husband’s employer and the late Maddie’s disability cheques, which Zoe suspected, still arrived. Why would the Pension Bureau care whether a Rim rat had died? 

￼

RADIANT COBB

Pippa’s future were privately discussed by Kaylee and Radiant. They agreed that Mal’s soft heart (’Soft head,’ said Radiant) had put the crew in an awkward position. Ma didn’t think she needed any help, but Jayne and Kaylee persuaded her that she would be doing a good deed by taking the girl in. 

Pippa would go to school in Prospect Ridge and pay for her keep by doing the marketing for Ma Cobb. She’d get room and board, school fees paid after she finished her Six, clothes and a small allowance. ‘May as well start teaching her how to handle money. She’ll need to know how soon enough.’ She smiled at the teenager, who inevitably, wept. 

Prospect Ridge turned out to be a surprisingly good market for Serenity’s cargo. The town was a hub for dozens of tiny villages and far flung homesteads, once hardscrabble but now as terraforming took hold and the water table rose, moving to cash crops over subsistence farming.  
The medical clinic was happy to buy the medicines Simon had stocked up on at (Diamond Molly).even the homeopathic ones. Both he and David were welcomed for their news and skills. The clinic staff sent out comms to some of their problem patients to take advantage of their off-world expertise. Simon would spend much of his visit doing cosmetic surgery on burn patients while David sat in on some difficult pregnancy consultations. 

The town actually supported a jeweller who took some of the uncut gems they had been carrying since Ugarit. ‘This is some good price,’ Dick the jeweller told them.  
Mal looked him in the eye. ‘Private consignment.’  
Dick grunted. he was a childhood friend of Jayne with the same rugged build, slipping to fat now that his occupation was sedentary. ‘I gotta customer on Hera. Sees my catalogue on the Cortex and made me a nice order. I was gonna post it, but probably Jayne’s crew are a safer bet. An lower cost.’  
Carriage was quickly agreed. ‘You understand my customer likes paperwork, so you’ll be passing this through Border Services.’  
‘Bottled in Bond, Dick,’ said Jayne.’ Not to fret’  
Dick invited Jayne and his crewmates to his home for dinner. Jayne agreed, pleased to see his old friend and catch up. Dick wanted to hear of Jayne’s adventures as a mercenary. The rest of the crew begged off.

Kaylee, Zoe and the children had walked around the town, doing a little shopping for groceries and books. Zoe found a used book store with texts for Year Fourteen and updated Year Six courses. Kaylee traded a few dozen of her romance novels for some new titles.  
‘I found a new story by Begonia Pope and Jane Austen, she chirrups to the shop owner, ‘ They are my favourite writers. And it’s called ‘Emma’ like our girl here.’  
The bemused shopowner tied up the pakage with string making a big loop to carry with. ‘Pope is the translator, actually.’ he told her.  
‘Austen writes in Chinese? Do you have any of those that ain’t translated yet? Actually, I don’t read Chinese all that good. Mebbee as manga?’  
‘I do, but no, Austen is, was, an Earth that -Was writer. She wrote in English bout seven hundred years ago.’  
Kaylee laughed. ‘Well, don’t that make me look the fool.’  
‘Not at all. Any us would need special training to read a book that old. Pope has that training and a very light touch with modern language.’

Dick and Jayne had grown up together, hardly ever darkening the door of the elementary school and had been taught to weld by Pa Cobb in the hope of keeping them out of jail as they got older and tougher. When Dick fell for Mai-Fen, she helped him learn how to read and write well enough to get his exams, eventually winning his master’s Red Seal. And somewhere he found he had a talent for the finer work needs for making jewelry.  
He was able to win a license to open an assay office where he could buy gold, silver and platinum direct from the mountain men who dug and panned where the Ridge turned to mountains.

Mia-Fen made them a fine dinner in their flat above the shop. Full of fried chicken and chips, Jayne and Dick were on their second mickey of shine, another useful trade item produced by Ma Cobb, when they heard a slight noise in the shop downstairs. Mia-Fen, who had been drinking with the men until she took a notion to lie down on the chesterfield ’for a little rest’ , woke with a gasp.  
“所有的神该死的强盗和破坏者。“ she said.  
‘Oh here we go again,’ muttered Dick.  
‘Again?’ asked Jayne.  
‘Bout once a month we get a break in. Sheriff aint’ been able to catch em though. And we’re usually asleep when they come.’  
‘Not tonight. ‘ Jayne strapped his pistol to his leg. ‘There a stair at the back?’  
‘Yes, but it goes outside, not to the store.’  
‘Get strapped. Go out front and make noise. I’ll take the back.’  
Dick clattered down the front staircase while Jayne slid silently down to the back door.  
The noise at the front told the intruders to leave by the back. They were slowed by a bolt on the door and when they tumbled into the yard. Jayne loomed up at them silently.  
The two glanced at each other then split , trying to run around him. From above there was a cry, ‘Boiling oil!” and a cascade of liquid.  
One of the men was swiftly inundated. He screamed in terror while his partner stood frozen in horror. Jayne stepped forward and disabled him by dislocating his shoulder and throwing him on the ground.  
Mai-Fan was laughing uncontrollably at the top of the staircase, while her victim screamed and writhed.  
Jayne shuddered.  
But the screams subsided quickly. There was no smell of fried flesh. The victim stopped to breathe.  
‘It ain’t hardly warm, you fucking idiot.’ she shouted down. ‘Tie him up or something, Jayne.’  
The robber was slippery with warm grease, but too shocked to fight back as Jayne tied him to his partner. Jayne didn’t worry about being gentle with the dislocated shoulder.

Dick had comm’d the sheriff from the front of the shop and she drew up with a deputy in a tiny fastcar. ‘You get em , Dick? Geez, I’da brought the maria if I’d thought.’  
‘We can make them walk to the 监狱, Hester. Do’em some good, the lazy bastards.’ She shook her head.”I don’t recognize them, maybe they’re off that Firefly that arrived today?’  
‘Hey,’ said Jayne, ‘Serenity’s an honest trader, strictly legal.’  
‘Jayne Cobb? What are you doing back? Here to break your mother’s heart again?’  
Jayne stepped into the light. ‘Hey Hester, ain’t you come up in the world since I left.’  
‘Don’t look much like you have,’ Hester cast a professional eye on his cheap shirt and hardworn pants. Jayne had not returned to the ship to dress for dinner.  
Jayne grinned. He and Hester had also grown up together. ‘What’s the routine now?’  
Hester sighed. She instructed the deputy to make captures of the scene and take statements from Dick and his wife. ‘I’ll watch these two to the station. I don’t wanna grease up the fastcar.’  
‘Lemme walk with you. Give you a hand if ya need one.’  
‘I gotta tether. They ain’t gonna run.’ she reached out and slapped the moaning robber on the ear. ‘Shut up and we’ll put your shoulder back now, or keep moaning and you can wait till the clinic can send someone over in the morning.’  
The robber gulped and muttered, ‘Please.’  
Jayne lifted him up, and with precise movements, put the arm back in its socket. The robber screamed. Hester slapped him again.  
‘I’ll make a list of whatever they got in their pockets and send your stuff back after getting captures for the Crown law.’  
As they walked the few blocks to the police station, Jayne and Hester were silent. The robbers were stripped and showed into separate cells. Jayne, something of an aficionado of jail houses, noted that the cells were clean and warm. There were thick cotton blankets on the benches and a toilet and sink in each.  
Hester took an inventory of everything in the men’s clothing, finding several sets of identification (‘Nothin new there,’ she muttered.) less of Dick’s fine jewelry than they had expected (‘Not even good at robbing’ Hester scowled.) and a few personal items including some cash and a set of brass knuckles. She tossed the clothes back into the cells with the men.  
About that time the deputy returned. Hester put his report with her own and told him to work it up before he was relieved at dawn.  
She stretched. “And that’s my day done and some.’ She say Jayne’s questioning look. ‘Charlie had just come on to relieve me when you called. Usually just one on overnight.’  
‘Prospect Ridge is quieter than it used to be.’  
‘Yeah, not as exciting as when you lived here.’  
Jayne grinned. He held the door open for the sheriff.’Live near here?’ he asked.  
Hester pointed to a small house behind a white picket fence about two blocks off the main street.  
‘Walk you home?’  
‘Wanna carry my books too?’  
Jane’s grin got wider and he pulled the sheriff tightly against him. ‘Been an interesting day.’  
Hester rubbed her hips against his.  
‘All kinds of excitement. I’m about ready for my bed.’  
‘Well, if you’re tired, I won’t keep ya.’  
‘Ready for bed, not for sleep. C’mon Jayne. We got some catching up to do.’

They were barely through the door, when Hester was pulling at Jayne’s belt with one hand while she turned the lock with the other. He glimpsed the tidy living space as the sturdy sheriff pushed him through the door into her bedroom.  
Her hands were all over him, sliding under his shirt, pulling the buttons on his flies open, reaching up to the back of his neck and pulling his head down for a kiss. Jayne lifted her off her feet and lay her back on the wide bed.  
‘You weren’t quite so eager last time.’  
“I was mad you was leaving.’  
‘Not your fault. I could have stayed here and welded like Pa until I set myself on fire out of sheer boredom.’  
‘We had fun though.’’  
’Yeah lil girlie, we did that.’  
‘I should maybe take off this vest.’  
‘I ain’t never seen you nekkid.’  
‘It’s been a while. We were… what?’  
‘I was 18 when I left.’  
You’ve added a couple of inches since then.’  
‘Didn’t get my full growth till I was over 21.’  
‘Yeah, you got taller, too,’ she said appreciatively, grasping Jayne’s cock firmly and stroking.  
’That’s good, lil girl. Don’t think I kin git any harder for you.’  
Jayne had unfastened the stickit straps of the vest and was pulling at her shirt and bra. ‘You’ve gotten bigger too.’  
‘Not too firm anymore.’ she sighed.  
‘Nice and soft, like cushions or clouds,’  
‘Who taught you to talk like that? Never mind, we’ve both had lives.’  
Jayne sniffed her hair, and slid down to her neck. ‘You got a real woman smell to you, with a little gunpowder and coffee.’  
‘We’ve both had a hard working night. We could shower together?’  
‘I’m fine if you are. And I don’t want to wait another… what is it? Near on forty years?’  
‘You ain’t looked me up when you was back with your ma few years back.’  
‘I was sorta hidin out then. We had a little trouble over … you remember Miranda?’  
‘The Tremblay girl? Oh fuck, do that again.’  
‘Like that? ‘ Jayne grinned again as Hester’s eyes bulged and her breath caught. He stopped, and stripped down to his skin. Hester’s whine of disappointment turned into a lascivious moan.  
She grabbed his cock again. ‘I think it’s gotten even bigger.’  
‘Feels as hard as it ever has been. What are you doin to me, lil girl?’  
‘Just a little hand job, boy. Get you as wet as I am.’  
‘If I don’t slide in there, I’m gonna pop.’  
Hester spread her legs wide. Jayne’s fingers told him she was wet and ready and he pushed into her. “Just the tip.’ he said.  
‘Bastard, that’s what you promised the first time we fucked. I couldn’t walk home I was so sore.’  
‘And you came round to Pa’s welding shop the next day with some lunch.’  
‘And you fucked me again. And then again after supper when we was supposed to be going to the picture show.’  
‘See, this time I’m telling the truth. Just the tip.’  
“If you don’t give me all of it, I’m gonna arrest you for false pretences. Aaah!’  
‘God you’re tight as a virgin.’  
‘Huh, you took care a that for me, long since.’  
‘Every day that summer, if I recall. God you was hot. I couldn’t get enough of you. And here you are, tight and hot and handsome as a filly.’  
Hester was twisting with every thrust Jayne made. He was sweating from working her so hard. He had one arm under her holding her to his chest, but raising her off the mattress so his weight didn’t crush her. His hand was on her ass with a finger stroking her taint. Her breasts were tantalized by rubbing on his thick chest hair. She felt her orgasm rising and let herself flow with it, breathing out in short gasps.  
She could still feel his hard cock in her, hot and thick, stretching her, pounding. Her clit was on fire rubbing against his pubic bone. He gave a little shudder as he came, relaxing a bit, but not releasing her or slipping out.  
She pushed him back .  
He tightened his grip on her and flipped onto his back. She stretched and sat up, perched on his still hard cock, making circles with her hips and smiled down at him. ‘I’ve learned not to make the man do all the work.’  
‘Ain’t work when you like it so much. God you’re hotter than a pistol after a gunfight.’  
She laughed flexing her Kegels and making him gasp.  
‘You wanna ride for a bit?’ he asked.  
“Let me get my breath first, boy.’ she slid up and down his hard slippery cock. ‘Mmm. That does feel good. It’s been a while since I got laid so good and proper.’  
Jayne’s hands were on her waist, his thumbs touching at her navel and stroking up and down. ‘Them’s some hard muscles on your belly, Hester. You been working them hard.’  
‘I gotta keep order when the mountain men come into town. They can get pretty rowdy. I gotta step on them hard.’  
‘You got backup. That deputy seemed okay.’  
‘He’s new. Yeah, he’s okay. And it’s getting quieter. I really only run into real trouble once bout fifteen year ago. Three guys weren’t as drunk as they seemed and took me unawares. When they was done raping me, I got a call out for backup and we took em out.’  
Jayne looked shocked.  
‘They raped…?”  
‘Yeah. But they thought I was scared or sumpin. They was shocked when I pistol whipped their leader and punched the the others in the balls. But they ain’t gonna do that to no other woman, ‘ she said with satisfaction.’They ain’t got the balls. Not anymore.’  
Jayne looked puzzled. ‘Between the field where they took me, and the station house, there was a little accident. One of em bled out, but the other two stood trial. And got took off to one of them prison planets. If they got a choir there, them assholes is singing soprano parts.’  
Jayne laughed. Uncomfortably.  
‘Your men look out for you.’  
‘Yeah, But that time I did for myself. You got a problem with that?’  
‘I’m treating you right though?’ he asked nervously.  
Hester rotated on his cock and squeezed him with her Kegels. ‘Ummm, yeah. You was a fond memory, even though you left pert abruptish. And you sure live up to the memory.’  
Jayne laughed more confidently. ‘You like being on top? ‘  
’Not really. I like being under a man. In bed. Not regular life.’  
‘I work with a bunch of women, that seem to want the same.’  
‘That could keep your bed warm. A bunch of women?’  
‘First Mate’s a widow. Mechanic is married to the Captain. Pilot is, huh, hot as hell but also scary crazy. She took on a gang of Reavers back in the day and killed the lot.’  
‘Reavers? They never came here. Just stories.’  
‘Not just stories. I seen em and I’m thorough glad the Lliance has been killing them off.’  
‘And your pilot took on a gang of them?’  
‘She looks like a ballet dancer talks like a Core lady, but that girl child is a stone killer. She’s at Ma’s right now.’  
‘Wanna go again?’  
‘I’m still hard and I come twice already. You got some skills, lil girl.’  
‘Do me again and then let’s have a shower. I think I’d like to lather you up.’  
Jayne laughed and flipped Hester onto her back. His hands were on her breasts, kneading gently and as promised his cock was still hard, filling her.She moaned and twisted. 

 

￼

 

SEVENTEENTH LEG  
HIGHGATE

 

Inbound - silk, linen cloth. linen shirts, gems, processed foodstuffsfine finished jewelry, butter, quinoa, buckwheat

Highgate: the name of this moon comes from the first settlement. The moon is rich in minerals in the mountains with fertile fields surrounding. Initial settlements led to groups conducting frequent raids on each other. This began to change when Samuel Potempkin rallied his neighbors into building a fortified city. They ensured that the only way into his city was through a series of high porticullises for which they named both the moon and the first city: Highgate. Other territories followed suit, with various local minor lords ruling. But for the Alliance, the ruling hierarchy would rule with almost unlimited feudal powers as of old. So far, there excesses are kept in check by the Alliance though, for the most part, they keep a light touch due to some significant business arrangements with the local government.

’Surprised it’s an open port, ’said Zoe.’ The locals wouldn’t be too Alliance friendly.’  
“All the better for us,’ said Mal.  
At the spaceport, the crew split up. Kaylee and River immediately took the three children to a nearby public park.  
Borrowing the mule, Simon and David were heading for the Azure Botanicals plant, where they expected to sell the last of their bales of herbs purchased on Dyton Colony.  
Zoe and Mal planned to set out on foot for the terminus where they would catch a transit car for the neighbouring market town and their contact.  
Jayne would stay with Serenity, but expecting no trouble he had asked permission to have ‘a friend’ over while the crew were scattered.  
‘What’s the friend’s name?’ asked Mal.  
‘Don’t know yet. Ain’t had time to check the classy ads for callouts.’  
Mal frowned.  
‘Hey, I’m just looking for some hot company. I’m surrounded by all this prime tail and its hard on a healthy man.’  
‘That’s my sister!” ‘And my wife!’ And me!’  
“iI ain’t gonna shit in my own woods.I know the crew is off-limits,but c’mon Mal.’  
‘Keep her in the public areas, not in the cargo bay. Or in your bunk.’ I got no objections, but keep security in mind. We still got a few warm cargo aboard. Don’t let yer floozie get any ideas.’  
“I ain’t plan on letting her outta my bunk.’  
Zoe rolled her eyes. Always an impressive display.  
David laughed.  
‘You know where the sheaths are, have fun.’  
He revved up the mule and, with Simon riding shotgun, drove down the cargo ramp.  
‘Use yer best judgement. The kids’ll be back in about five hours. If you’re done and the woman is acceptable, you can introduce her to Kaylee and River. And when they’re back you can go off duty. Zoe and David can help load the cargo, if it all works out.’

‘That seems to be the place, sir.’  
‘No zactly prepossessin, but we’ve seen worse. We ‘re just the delivery boys on this’n.’

There was a very high chain fence topped with razor wire surrounding the dusty square tithe several galvanized steel quonsets precisely set at angles to form a hexagon. Although the road had been lined with bamboo bush and a few small copses of trees as well as green meadows dotted with sheep, llamas and other grazers, the square was clear of vegetation in either bare earth or concrete.  
‘Inviting.’  
A short man in war surplus body armour, green paint flaking off the purple enamel, trotted over, a shotgun at the ready.  
Mal and Zoe raised their hands.  
‘We got appointment. Delivery for yer stores man.’  
‘Name!’  
‘Reynolds and Washburne, offa Serenity, with a delivery from CCWong and Family back at Prospect Ridge. We comm’d we was was in port.  
The guard pinged someone then shrugged. He opened the gates wide enough to allow the mule and its tagalong through, then slammed them suit and locked them.  
Three more men trotted out from the furthest quonset. from their equipment, all were obviously stevedores . They surrounded the tagalong and pulled back the canvas cover. Seeing the sealed crates they relaxed. The oldest stevedore pinged with his comm. All clear.’ He nodded at Mal and Zoe.’Go to Building Five. They’ll process payment for your sender and pay your delivery fee.’  
‘Delivery fee’s already paid by the Wongs. Building Five’s that one?’

Building Five was, oddly, located between Building Seven and Building Three, but they found it on their second try. The door was opened by an armed guard, who took their paperwork and checked it carefully. Zoe and Mal exchanged puzzled looks.  
’ A lot of security for machine parts.’  
The guard grunted, making a hand signal to someoneinside the building. Then he grinned, showing a striking set of stainless steel teeth.  
‘We have has some problems, he said in a warm rich baritone.’Sorry for the delays. We’ll get you unloaded faster than the cat had kittens.’  
The stevedores from the gate rolled up the dock gate and started moving the bamboo crates into the quonset.  
The guard wave Mal and Zoe to a bench by the door. Obviously they were not going to be asked inside out of the noon heat.

‘What do you fellas produce here?’ asked Mal amicably.  
The guard looked wary. ‘Why?’  
‘Sorry, just makin conversation. None of our business, right?’  
‘Right,’ agreed the guard.’I’m not trying or be unfriendly , but we’ve has some troubles, industrial espionage, vandalism, some of it petty, some downright nasty.’  
’Fair enough.’

Mal waited for a few minutes. ‘There a resto or gastro I could take the missus to here? She been cooped up fer two weeks and think she needs a break.’  
The guard grinned at Zoe and suddenly started singing.

‘She may be weary, women do get weary, wearing that same cotton dress....’  
Zoe blinked at him. His singing voice was as attractive as his speaking voice. Then it was Mal’s turn at surprise when she joined in,  
‘But if she’s weary, try a little tenderness...”  
‘I ain’t heard you sing since Emma was a babe in arms, Zoe. Right pleasant.’  
‘Thank you, sir. My daddy used to sing that one to my mum.’  
The guard nodded.’ My pa did the same.’ His steel teeth glinted in the sun. ‘Where you from, m’am?’  
‘Ship born.’  
‘Good cabin fever song.’  
Zoe nodded.  
‘Well, if the lady like red meat I’d recommend Wah Fatt. Good lamb and terrific Curry Goat. For fresh salads and the like, I’d take her to the Green Door. It’s a vegetarian buffet and they haves lots of different greens as well as some good casseroles.’  
‘Which do you think Kaylee would prefer, Zoe?’  
‘The one with the best desserts, sir.’  
Mal was searching his comm and found both eating spots.  
‘Looks like the Green Door then.’ He walked off to make reservations.

‘So he’s not your man?’  
Zoe shook her head.  
‘Would you like to try Wah Fatt’s with me?’  
Zoe blinked again. “I’m usually in charge when the captain is on shore.’  
‘Sorry I didn’t mean to...’  
Zoe looked at him. ‘Usually, ain’t always. Does Wah Fatt mean dressing up?’  
The guard laughed. ‘You get a nicer table if you do.’

Mal returned with a satisfied face. ‘Looks like we’re about done, then?’  
The stevedores were folding the tarps back on the mule.  
‘Looks like , I’m Kwame Rogers, by the way, pleased to do business with you’  
Mal shook his hand.’Mal Reynolds.’  
‘And?’  
‘Zoe Washburne. See you tonight about 1830?’

They were halfway back to the shipyard before Mal broke the silence. “Go another contract for us, Zoe?’  
‘Personal, sir.’  
‘So I should shut up then.’  
‘Seems like, sir.’

Kwame was prompt to pick up Zoe. He wore a very handsome grey silk evening coat which David remarked matched both his eyes and his teeth, making Simon giggle.  
‘We’re going to Wah Fatt, Emma. I won’t be late.’  
Emma nodded and kissed her mother, followed by a Death Glare at her mother’s beau.  
Zoe swept out on Rogers’ arm in a flurry of red silk chiffon.

￼

 

‘I don’t thnk I’ve seen that dress before,  
‘It’s one of the ones we got from Nara.’ explained Kaylee, ‘On her it was ankle length. On me too, but on Zoe and River it’s cocktail length.’  
‘You ready , bao bei?’ Mal asked Kaylee, who was giving some last minute instructions to Emma.  
‘Take me to the salad bar, capt’n.’

The next morning when Jayne returned from his shore leave, he passed a tired young man that River had brought home leaving.  
‘How come I gotta get permission and lil moon brain kin bring home anything she scoops up?’ he complained to the crew at breakfast.  
‘She’s a better judge of character than you.’  
‘That Kelly was kinda sketchy. He tried ta roofie y’all.’  
‘We got a good contract outta him, after all was said and done, though. It went pretty smooth.’

Simon and David had stayed home with the children the night before, but today they were invited to visit the local drop in clinic. Kaylee was heading for the used parts warehouse, famous sectorwide for its wideranging stock. Mal spelled Jayne off as her body guard.  
‘The folks yesterday were skittish about security, keep alert.’  
Jayne looked offended that such notice was necessary, but promised to be ready when he had eaten and showered.

‘Rogers was telling more about his troubles at dinner, sir.’  
‘Any thing we need to know?’  
‘Seems the magistrate died sudden last year. Alliance sent in an interim governor and he’s a problem.’  
‘On the take?’  
‘More like takin on. He’s been buying out all the business, at first makin low but fairish offers, but more and more , he moved to making doing business difficult.’  
‘Yer boyfriend seems to worry about force.’  
‘Hasn’t come to that yet., but he’s not the only one who’s upped security. Mostly the magistrate slows down import/export permits.’  
‘We likely to have trouble leaving?’  
‘Mebbee.’  
Mal pinged Kaylee and asks her to find out from the scrappers if they could confirm the problems with the new governor.  
‘What’s his name capt’n?  
Zoe leaned in. ‘Wing, but I dunno anything else.’  
‘Kay, we’ll ask around.’

When Kaylee and Jayne returned they both confirmed Rogers’ complaints. The scrapyard had a new ‘tax’ on off world purchases and there was talk of requiring salvagers to show their salvage licenses or buy new ones which -unlike the rare and expensive Federal licences— would only be good for Highgate. ‘Governor is telling the scrappers that a Highgate license would be cheaper than Federal one. The guy was sayin that they are gonna be about a quarter the price.’  
‘But only good for Highgate?’  
‘Zactly.’  
‘He’s goin after whorin licences too. Gal I rented yesterday was saying his troops stiffed a couple of the whores on party rentals and when they complained to Wing, he start talking about special business licenses. ‘  
‘Restraint of trade, new taxes on his own. That’s a parliamentary prerogative.’  
‘So what kin we do? Sides hope we don’t get landlocked.’  
‘First star to the left and straight on to morning.’  
‘Yeah, River, we probably should leave as soon as possible.’  
Simon looked at Mal quizzically.  
‘You and Crazy on the same wave again, Mal?’ asked Jayne.  
‘Someone’s gottta be. Wish we could do something to help these people.’  
River got up and swayed rhythmically around the galley.  
‘Nope not getting that suggestion.’

Rogers had put out the word that Serenity could carry off world shipments and was not too particular about paperwork. The crew found themselves visiting cafes and taverns ranging from cheery fast food family spots to scary dives, arranging clandestine contracts and pickups from a dozen nervous factory owners.  
’I don’t like doin this,’ muttered a heavyset canner of processed meats.”But the new taxes are killin my export trade.’ He dandled Beege on his knees and glanced at Kaylee. ‘Ti’m just hopin you all are as honest as Rogers claims.’  
‘If we was completely honest,’ smiled Kaylee,’We wouldn’t be bending local law like this, hey?’ She laughed and the older man gave her a rueful smile.  
Zoe got a similar message from a high strung matron, owner of a celluloid factory, who met with her and Emma at a dress shop.  
Jayne heard it heard it when he arranged a contract in a dive so low, he confessed to waiting until he was well down the road before finding an alley to piss in.  
Simon heard that medicines were becoming expensive due to new duties being imposed.  
Everyone they spoke with was worried about complaining, concerned that they would be overheard by spies. There were rewards for informing on manufacturers and merchants who were not paying the new fees, taxes and duties. 

But it was Kaylee who found the most surprising news.  
‘I saw this new governor everone’s complaining about, an you’ll never guess.’  
‘Guess you’re just a good man,’ River laughed. Simon sighed. Jayne grunted in irritation.  
‘The new governor, we’ve met him before.’  
‘When?’ asked Mal. ‘Oh shit. Wing. On Persephone.’  
‘Atherton Wing.’ confirmed Kaylee, who had seen him parading the lovely Inara Serra on his arm at a ball on that world. She had attended with Mal, wearing the most beautiful dress she had ever imagined, then been hustled back to Serenity, when Mal inadvertently challenged Wing to a duel over the Companion’s honour.  
‘What’s he doing out here running a Rim world?’  
‘Probably has ambitions in politics. He’s want to have some experience in the field before standing for election.’ said Simon.  
‘Do Lords need election?’  
‘He’s inherited a title and probably a fortune. But serving in Parliament, even in the House of Lords… well, there are 70 billion souls in the ‘Verse. Two and a half billion on Persephone. Not everyone with a title can qualify. I’m not sure of the situation on Persephone, but on Osiris, the aristocracy elected Members from their own to serve on Londinium in the Lords.’  
‘But if he’s got money, why bother draining the lifeblood outta Highgate?’ asked Kaylee, accepting the bowl of rice Simon passed to her.  
‘Because he can, reckon.’ replied her husband. ‘He was a bully on Persephone and now he has a new bunch to push around.’  
‘And no one to push back,’ said Zoe.  
There was a quiet moment while everyone filled their bowls with rice and Canh Thit Ca rot Khoai Tay, pork stew with vegetables. Simon had bought sweet buns for dessert and there was cow’s milk and almond milk on the table, as well as pots of tea.  
‘We could,’ remarked Mal.  
‘Saw that coming,’ said Jayne.  
‘The governor sets the laws, sir. We can slip around, but we can’t change that.’  
‘But we know people who can,’ said Simon.  
‘Who?’  
‘Dortmunder. We did them a favour and made a few friends there. And they are the law in this sector.’  
Mal whistled. ‘But the governor makes the law.’  
Simon shook his head. ‘ Not exactly. The magistrate enforces the law within the guidelines of the Parliament. I am fairly sure that these new duties and taxes are not within the guidelines. And it would be interesting to have an audit of the books.’  
‘You have the makins of a fine criminal mind, doc,’ said Mal. ‘How do we go about takin Wing down? Again.’

First they had to get off-world. Serenity had been parked at the Highgate dock, which was mostly an open field, so lightly used that it was also common pasture for some of the local ranchers.  
This meant that loading cargo was a very public affair, although few workers were employed at the dock. The crew assumed they were Wing’s men.  
Jayne learned differently. ‘I was … visiting a friend… and got to talking to some of the dockworkers. They ain’t too pleased with Wing neither. They was unionized and Wing broke the union, bought out the executive and ain’t enforcing the safety protocols. The boys ain’t too happy with him.’  
‘Reckon they would notice if we was loading a lot more cargo than was on the manifest?’  
‘They ain’t gonna risk that. But if we was to come and go a few times, they might not be looking into the cargo bay every time.’  
‘We can use the shuttles to pick up smaller cargos and load them somewheres quiet,’ suggested Zoe. ‘I’ll look at maps on the Cortex.’  
’There’s a place for us, somewhere a place for us. Peace and quiet and room to share…Latitude:48.428613°  
Longitude:-123.364912°’ warbled River.  
‘Okay, I guess I can skip the search.’

River’s ‘place’ was a dry gulch, not far from town but across some rough unsettled desert where terraforming had produced hot sulphurous springs. The springs were something of an attraction, or would perhaps one day be, when the economy was stronger. In the subsistence economy of Highgate few went there. But that off-worlders would investigate was not unusual.  
Several of the larger cargoes were delivered over the course of the two days the ship was there. 

Simon and David took samples of the water, to investigate them for medicinal properties.  
‘The most therapeutic value is likely to be the relaxing effect of the hot water,’ Simon grouched.  
’Therapeutic springs have a long history of use in natural medicine,’ David argued. ‘Even if all we do is encourage a tourism industry here for the springs, it would be worthwhile.’  
‘Encouraging superstition and placebos,’ said his husband. ‘But it gives us a cover story, not that it would do any good if anyone looks in the hold.’

Mal took Kaylee and the children exploring the countryside around the town. He hired a horse and went riding alone and when Derry expressed disappointment, hired another and gave him some basic lessons.

Zoe met with Kwame Rogers once or twice during their few days at Highgate She smiled a lot and sometimes was overheard humming.

On what was planned to be their last day, she was having lunch with Rogers at The Table, when there was a little stir at the door. A handsome man, with striking blue eyes escort eda much younger woman, dresses extravagantly for daytime on this Rim world. His jacket was simple enough but was topped with a scarlet sash.

￼

LADY CABOTT WING

 

“Lord Atherton Wing, ‘ murmured Rogers’ And that’s his wife, Cabott, back in the world from Shinon. Looks like she’s been shopping.’  
Wing overruled the maitre d’s choice of a quiet table, choosing instead a seat by the window, where he and his beautiful young wife could see and be seen by passersby.  
Zoe watched the couple as they looked at the menu and ordered. It appeared as if the young woman had very specific wishes for her meal. Wing watched her with a doting eye.  
‘It’s supposed to be an arranged marriage, but Wing is also supposed to be the one who worked on the arrangement. She brought a lot of money into the marriage.’  
‘She’s a pretty thing. Lot younger than him.’  
‘He’s over forty. She’s probably older than she looks. Core people usually are. Young enough for children anyway.’  
‘You know he’s on the Companion Guild blacklist?’ asked Zoe. ‘He insulted a Companion and was dropped from their client index, going on ten years ago.’  
‘Well, that’s interesting,’ Kwame replied.’Makes me think he my deserve anything that minx dishes out.’  
Cabott Wing was pushing a plate away with a cute moue. Atherton summoned the server and the plate was whisked away. There was a quiet conversation near the kitchen door.  
‘Dunno the problem. I think I had the same thing, tofu and salal berries with udon noodles.’  
‘You demolished it,’ laughed Kwame. ‘I do like to see a woman enjoy her food.’  
The server brought another dish for Lady Wing. As she passed, Zoe saw it was something quite different, a sort of patty garnished with an edible flower salad. It was acceptable and the server returned to the kitchen looking relieved. The maitre d’ brought a bottle of wine to the Governor’s table.  
Kwame and Zoe relaxed over their dessert and espresso. They had enjoyed each other’s company although they knew they were ships passing in the night. Now they were saying goodbye, probably forever.  
‘I’ve been lucky,’ said Zoe reflectively. ‘I’ve only had a few men n my life, but they’ve been good men.’  
‘Your husband.’  
‘He made me laugh so much. And Mal is a rock with a heart of custard. There was a boy in the war….,’ she sighed. ‘But one gave me my daughter and one gave me a job. And I have some sweet memories.’  
Kwame was about to speak when the Wings stood and prepared to leave. The maitre d’ hurried over with their bill, but quailed at the Governor’s frown. They swept out.  
The server looked close to tears.  
‘Mercy has two kids in school and depends on her tips. Cheap ass trick to stiff the server,’ Rogers muttered. ‘Huh, time for us to go too.  
He summoned the moist-eyed server and paid their bill, then tucked a ten credit note under his coffee cup. ‘I know the service charge is divided. The cash tips the server can keep.’  
Outside, Rogers took Zoe’s arm and turned left. Zoe stopped him. ‘I guess you was planning for us to go back to your flat again, but, well, thank you. We’re leaving as soon as all the crew gets aboard.’  
’Sneaking out of town?’  
‘Yep. Like scaredy little pussies.’  
‘I wish your pussy could be back in my bed, but… it was fun. I really liked the time we’ve had together.’  
‘Like I was sayin, I’ve been lucky with the men I’ve chosen.’  
Kwame moved to kiss her. ’Not on the street.’  
‘May I walk you back to the dock? There may be a quiet corner before we get there.’  
Zoe laughed. 

‘I gotta go pick up my kids at school,’ the dockyard manager told Mal. ‘Here are your papers. If you’d be kind enough to fill in your cargoes, I’ll calculate your export fees when I get back.’  
‘Sure,’ said Mal, with his most charming smile. ‘Could we pay our docking fees now? Save us all some time.’  
The manager blushed a little. ‘Sure. Oh geez, I shouldn’t’a signed that until the cargo fees were paid too. I’ll be back in about an hour. Don’t leave before I do that.’ She smiled back at the handsome captain.  
As he left the office, she took a moment to admire how nicely those tight pants clung to his very fine ass. Then she grabbed her bag and headed off to the school. 

As soon as River saw the manager’s fastcar leave the shipyard, they took off for the Black.

Mal spent a few hours sweating over his report for the inspector they had met when they were stopped for inspection in the Black by IAV Dortmund. As much as possible he described the effects of the new, possibly illegal fees and taxes Atherton Wing had slapped on the citizens of Highgate. He added copies of expropriation papers and purchase agreements that unhappy businesses had shown him.  
Simon read over his work and corrected a few terms. ‘I ain’t written anything like this since I left school,’ Mal told him. ‘Don’t think I’ve actually written anything longer than a page in years.’  
‘I think you covered the basic points, and more importantly, you pointed the inspectors where they can confirm your claims, ‘ Simon replied. ‘Now, how do we get this to Dortmunder without having to be inspected ourselves? I doubt our paperwork would hold up to hard scrutiny.’

‘Don’t look like nobody’s chasin us from Highgate, though. Maybehap we could just send the report by Cortex. We got a private ping for anybody on board?’  
‘Well, for that Pat in the engineering, but I dunno how interested she’d be. Or he. Never did work that one out,’ mused Kaylee.  
‘We do need a few more pronouns,’ laughed Simon. ‘How about the inspector who came on board?’  
‘He hailed us, but that means we should be able to hail him. I’m coming down with another case of the stupids.’ said Mal.  
Jayne muttered something, but was ignored.  
Mal sent his report to the inspector and got a polite note back with a private addendum, ‘This kind of feudal behaviour is not what Parliament expects of its appointees. I give my word that it will be looked into.’  
‘Well, we done our duty as nice little Alliance citizens. For whatever good it may do.’

 

 

￼

EIGHTEENTH LEG  
Hera/ Argo.

 

This is the kind of job I could get used to,’ said Mal ‘Agreed payment, no haggling, we just deliver and collect our share.’ He steered the loaded mule expertly down the wide boulevard.  
Jayne leaned back, his hands behind his head.  
‘Lotta little booths along the road, he replied.’ we should check ‘em out on the way back. Pick up some fresh food.’  
Red Sun shone down on the wide streets of the commercial warehouse district of Argo. It was a fresh late spring day . Fruit trees were in blossom along the road leading to the warehouse of Flamingo Products where they would turn over the sealed cargo they had been hauling all the way from Harvest sixteen weeks away.  
“It’s been good, this New Canaan Run. No big trouble. Profitable on the whole.’  
‘Outsida Kaylee and the kids getting trapped by the earthquake on New Canaan, the Triangle fire on Silverhold, buying that slave girl from Saffron, kidnappin Kelly …”  
‘None of em was hurt in the quake, and we found a good new product in them pineapples. Yer ma has a young healthy companion, Kelly was happy enough with a second night with River so he’ll be a good contact, and so’s your jeweller friend. ‘  
‘Still don’t know where Rosie went.’  
‘If that was her name. She had a smart line of talk for a factory girl. I’m wondering if she didn’t have a mysterious past.’  
‘Not likely ever to know now.’  
‘Still a good chance she got out and prolly got re-chipped. Doc said they was a lotta that going on at the aid clinic.’  
Jayne was silent, but his disposition never sunny, had blackened.

They drove on in silence.  
‘We should be bout there now. See any numbers? Or company signs?’  
‘There’s 4815 and 4917, we’re looking for 5293? Should be … ah, shit.’  
As they turned the corner an illuminated sign number 5293 stood tall at the roadside. But the panel was papered over with a tattered ‘Going Out Of Business’ banner weather worn and months old.  
‘Shit. Shit.Shit. Shit.’  
‘Okay, Mal. What now?’

Zoe was her usual collected self when they returned to Serenity. ‘First question is , what’s left of the company. Second is, who owns the cargo?’  
‘It was paid up front, so it belongs to Flamingo Products ,or I guess the bankruptcy trustees,’ Mal replied  
‘But we ain’t got our carrier fee. That give us some ownership plus we actually are holding it. Nine tenths.’ said Jayne.  
“I wouldn’t trust that was the law, sir,’ put in Zoe, ‘And I suspect Hera is big on law. This ain’t the Rim.’  
‘Well we can ask around. Meantimes, we got all this cargo takin up space we could be filling with new cargo. And we got customers for the private cargoes.’

Jayne was to deliver his friend’s jewelry consignment. He and Mal would also deliver the stolen uncut stones they had received on Ugarit Moon since the two businesses were in the same district. But those cargoes, stored in secret lockboxes, did not change the stuffed cargo bay. 

￼

 

‘Could have been worse, captain,’ Kaylee sighed, ‘at least Simon and David sold all those bales of herbs to Azure Pharma on Highgate. And the canned food got dropped on New Canaan as planned.’  
‘Yeah, but Business Solutions Unlimited expects us to pick up new cargo here and we just ain’t got the room.’

While Mal stewed, Zoe had been on the Cortex, talk to her brother back on Persephone.  
‘Well, Perse has good news and bad news,’ she reported. “Flamingo is dead, gone and buried. They went so far under they may as well be at the bottom of a black hole. Most of the owners and managers are in jail.’  
‘So?,’ asked Mal, kicking at one of the barrels they seemed to be stuck with.  
’So Perse figures they got paid and they don’t want it back. They owe us our carraige fee and say this stuff is ours in lieu.’  
‘Means we gotta get shut of it our own self.’ said Mal. ‘And we don’t even know what it is, never no mind who would buy it. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.’  
‘We got paper on it , sir.’ added Zoe.  
‘So it’s really ours? Strictly legal?’  
‘Yep. Well, probably. No one around else to claim it.’  
‘So we’re merchants now. What all we got to sell?’  
‘Gold. Most of what we carry is spoke for and has paper, we still got two kilos of our own,’ said Jayne. “An I switched around the lots so that we got the hunnert gram bars, not the kilo bricks.’  
‘Embroidered silk is spoke for but the neographene armour cloth was a nice lagniappe,’ said Zoe. ‘And three bales worth.’  
‘Got some good report parts for Firefly Shipworks boats from Dyton. Serenity can’t use em all, and they’s damn good copies.’ added Kaylee. ‘And I got fuel cells that need rechargin. I could trade maybe get some coin too. But that’s gonna be for other transports, figger.’  
‘And the last barrel of icewine,’ finished Mal. ‘I wanna leave Hera with nuthin that we came in with.’  
‘So we got lots to sell, enough to leave us on the catbird seat for a few months. Gotta find buyers though.’  
“Most of the stuff we got paper. So it’s just a question of finding a buyer. But the gold we need a private deal and not many can handle two kilos at a decent price,’ said Zoe.  
‘Check market on gold bullion, Tross?’ asked Mal. ‘Reckon we could do that easiest by spreading it around. Kaylee , could you and River visit jewelry stores selling small bars?’  
‘Sure. We could dress up like fine Core ladies! It’d be fun.’

Kaylee and River raided the trunk of clothing left behind by Inara. River needed some discrete padding to match the courtesan’s curves, while Kaylee was tightly laced into her gown. ‘You can tell I’ve got kids now,‘ she said ruefully. Mal whispered something in her ear and she blushed.

The women had no trouble selling a full kilo of the little bars at market price, one or two at a time. Kelly might have been a shady character, but his gold was full value.  
‘You picked a good one there, Riv,’said Kaylee.  
‘Who was he, anyway,’ murmured River, puzzled.  
‘Short guy, dark brown, big eyes?’ We met him on Beggar’s Tin?’  
‘We went to the ballet and then fucked for twenty minutes and then for sixteen.’  
‘Uh yeah. I guess.’  
‘And the next day he was still around and he performed cunnilingus for twelve minutes and nine seconds,’ River continue with satisfaction.’The I fellated him for ten and then I fucked him for six minutes. I remember! His penis was…”  
‘Okay, mei mei,’ said Kaylee.’ Good you remember him. Maybe we’ll see him again. Beggar’s Tin ain’t far from Persephone.’  
“I have that tee shirt,’ River shrugged.  
‘Umm. Okay.’

River had the most success in selling the gold bars, her Core accent and demeanour making it clear that she need not, should not be queried about the source of the metal. Kaylee’s clear eyes and winning smile persuaded most of her buyers that she could not be anything but honest.  
‘Well, it weren’t us that stole it, anyways,’ she told herself.  
The other kilo was put aside in a hidey hole for another world or an emergency. A wave sent the proceeds to Kelly’s bank. River took a few minutes to send him a private message. ‘So he won’t complain about the other kilo,’ she explained. ‘I know what he will like to see.’  
‘Sometimes I think that girl ain’t got no morals,’ Kaylee said to Mal in their bunk.  
“Considering what we’re doing right now, should we say anything?’  
‘Well, but we’re married.’  
‘And this was something of a favourite of yours before we was married, bao bei. ‘  
‘Still is. You win. Me an Riv is both sluts. An if you stop, I might cry.’

The neographene had no paper trail but Jayne took on the task of finding a buyer by visiting the weapons dealers of Argo. Most were strictly retail and by the book, but one was interested in the armour cloth.  
‘But a bale? At 100 a metre, no import fees paid? I can’t really handle that.’  
‘Don’t hafta. Find me a decent buyer, cash, and you get a finder’s fee.’  
‘Might do, might do.’  
‘One percent of the final price, do you? That’s mebbee fifteen per metre for a name.’  
‘I was thinking five.’  
Jayne took a minute to work out the figures on his com. ‘Too high. Hera might be the best place to sell, but it ain’t the only one.’  
They settled at two five.

Zoe agreed that the fee was no problem since the fabric had been free, except for the shipping costs. “But we have three bales not one, Jayne.’  
‘Five hunnert metres in a bale, right? Market for that would be hunnert fifty thou. If we get half that we’re flying for a year. An we can spread it around. Twenny five thou a bale, not ever body got that kinda coin right to hand.’

 

Jayne’s weapons dealer found a buyer, a manufacturer of personal defense products who was able to take all three bales of the armoured fabric. He liked the deal so much that he threw in neographene vests for everyone on the crew, including the children, from his stock.  
‘It’s a frankly terrifying though that you make em that small,’ Mal told him as they exchanged the bales for boxes of untraceable Independent coin.  
‘Still some rough places in the ‘Verse, and more coming available as the terraforming continues, but these usually go to the families of high officials.’ the factor explained. ‘Cause kidnapping and the like. You wanna lose all faith in humanity— lookit this.’ He produced a hooded infant’s onesie.  
Mal growled. 

But the Flamingo Products cargo still sat in the hold, filling space. Mal stared at the manifest, trying to work out what the list of part numbers and generic names meant.  
Baffled , he passed the pages to Simon and David, who had the widest educations.  
“They seem to be machine parts, but there’s no indication ow what sort of machine. What business was Flamingo in?’  
‘They were middlemen. Actually they were middlemen for middlemen for middlemen. Only reason they existed seems to be to muddle the paper trail. The’d still be in business if the managers didn’t decide to steal all the money.’ said Zoe.  
‘And they weren’t smart enough to realize they was working for someone smarter.’  
‘Good point, Jayne.’  
‘I got another good point. Why don’t we open the crates and see if we recognize anything. ? Mebbee find an instruction booklet?’  
‘I didn’t want to do that in case it reduced the price, but looks like we’re at needs must. Well don’t get paid out till we sell this stuff.’  
Jayne produced a prybar and climbed to the top crate. The tough bamboo splintered under his attack.  
‘Hey, Doc, take a look at this. Seems like your kinda stuff.’  
Simon swung gracefully up. The doctor looked small and slender compared to the other men, but he was as athletic as any of them.  
“Oh my, we’ll do well with this,’ he called down. He leaned down, passing thin printed box to Mal.  
‘What am I looking at, Doc? Some kinda medical equipment?’  
‘Mostly parts for some very expensive diagnostic and imaging equipment. I can’t put a price on any of it, but it can’t be cheap.’  
‘Can you think of a buyer?’  
‘Here? We’d have to research. the market can’t be large, teaching hospitals come to mind, perhaps some laboratories doing genetic work…’ he paused, thinking. ‘We should keep River from this.’  
Mal shrugged. ‘ She don’t bother with cargo much, How soon can you get a buyer list?’  
‘For on-world, perhaps an hour. I’d suggest David and I handle the selling end for the most part.’  
‘Fine, you speak the language. When we get down to dregs, me and Zoe can peddle it to liquidators. We got a plan?’

The medics used their Flying Doctor credentials to introduce themselves to the procurement divisions of Li Tieguai and St. Aesculpius hospitals in Argo. They sold about a third of the equipment there, although the buyers cherrypicked through the crates. Those buyers referred them to other hospitals and the crew had a busy week, flying around the planet to various customers.  
Mal and Zoe acted as shuttle pilots for the deliveries, bringing Simon or David to customers and acting as navvies for unloading.  
Kaylee and River passed the time in shopping for the crew and children.  
‘Get receipts!’ warned Mal, ‘One of the days we may need them for the tax collector. Use the Alliance scrip first, and keep the Independent coin.’  
Rim people were none too trustful of fiat currencies, even less happy with the federal scrip with its built-in tracking. Alliance coin was also chipped, and the old Independent coin was still preferred on the Rim because it was almost bullion quality, partly as a result of that skepticism , partly because many Rim worlds had minted their own coin from their own mines. Purity meant a Shadow platinum was worth as much as a Greenleaf platinum- and in terms of actual platinum content, more than a federal platinum coin. 

It was a busy week but at the end they had only slightly more than a single crate of sealed boxes, neatly labelled and still profoundly mysterious even to the medics.  
Mal counted the piles of Alliance bills .”Looks like everyone is getting paid this month, and back pay too.’  
Jayne took his stack of bills and divided it neatly in half. ‘ I gotta send this to Ma. She’s got two mouths to feed again.’  
He left the ship, hurrying against closing hours for banks and wave terminals. 

Mal was putting supper on the table, freshly baked curried chicken buns, stirfried celery and red peppers and a dessert of Custard Surprise with a scoop of fresh berries buried in vanilla pudding. Beege was toddling around the dining area putting various dolls on the chairs, considering them and then re-arranging.  
Derry and Emma were in the commons finishing up a mathematics lesson with River. The rest of the crew slowly assembled, drawn by the sweet scent of the buns.  
“Where’s Jayne?’ asked Kaylee, serving the children.  
‘He went to send his ma some money just after lunch,’ said Simon. “I saw him leaving the Persephone Planetary about an hour after that. At least I saw his hat. I don’t suppose there is another like it.’  
‘I’ll put something aside for him, but he’s probably planning to eat out.’

Jayne had only planned to have a few beers then return in time for supper. Kaylee was still making her Inter-Engine brew, but she had never mastered beer, and Hera produced some fine ales and lagers..  
He found a tavern, fancier than his usual choices. The bar had a small forecourt, with table for watching the passing crowd, which was roofed with sweet smelling hops , a nod to its name, The Hopvine.

Ordering his second ale, he stretched out in the afternoon sun. His ma taken care of, money in his pocket, beer in front of him. All he needed now was some female company. He slid his hand into his pants. As if he had rubbed aladdin’s lamp, a slender young woman appeared.  
‘May I sit here?’ she asked quietly.  
Jayne looked around. All the other tables were empty. ’Sure,’ he grinned. ‘Looking fer company?’  
The girl looked at him solemnly, her straight scarlet hair glowing in the sunshine.  
‘I don’t like to be alone,’ she said.  
‘Well, yer welcome to sit. Wanna drink?’  
’Not at this time..  
They sat together silently. Jayne finished his glass.  
‘If yer a pro, you should say somethin, cause I was thinking of finding some.’  
‘Yes’.  
Jayne was disconcerted by her response, but aroused by the girl’s slender frame and solemn face.  
‘Well, you gotta place? My boat don’t leave me much privacy.’  
‘Yes.’ She rose gracefully and Jayne left a few coins on the table for the server and followed her. At the corner, he put his arm around her and sniffed her hair, noticing that she, like many local hookers, wore a wig. The girl did not react to his touch, which was disappointing. Most women, Jayne found, liked his touch or at least pretended to. This coolness was… interesting.  
The girl took him from the busy shopping street to a much quieter residential area only two blocks away.  
‘Here,’ she said.  
Jayne saw a small house in the western style of stucco imitating adobe, with a Japanese sand garden out front hedging a very high thick hedge. Once through the solid gate, almost a door, the slight traffic noise disappeared.  
It was a very private place. Jayne took advantage and ran his hands over the girl’s slender frame. Tiny breasts, barely more than a curve beneath a hard nipple and almost flat buttocks, very firm. He slipped his fingers under the hem of her blouse and into her thin cotton trousers. She was definitely ready to show him a good time.  
‘You live here alone, girlie?’  
‘No.’  
‘Let’s go in then, you’re near as hot as I am.’  
‘Yes. Let’s do this.’  
Down the he central hall of the house to a small room with iron bed and a sink/commode like those on Serenity.  
Jayne pulled the girls top off exposing her bare breasts. She pulled away then undid his belt and removed his pants. Jayne took off his shirt, his erection tenting his boxers. He grasped her at her waist and sat back on the bed.  
She slid her hand down his arms then push him back. Some how his hands were about his head as he moved across his body. And somehow he was tied to the bedstead. He grinned. “Well, not what I usually go for, girlie, but do your worst. Kin I get a blowjob? Or d’you go straight to the ruttin?’  
“No. Now you tell me about our sister.’  
‘Your…? I never seen you before. I don’t know your sister.’  
‘Our sister. Her name is River. We lost her. Early was a fool.’  
Jayne struggled to loosen the bindings but only shook the bedstead. ‘River Tam? She ain’t got a sister. Just that snotty doctor brother.’  
‘She’s much more like me than any blood. She left before she was finished. I want to help her complete herself.’  
‘Yer as crazy as she is. Girl’s near on thirty. She’s about done as any grown woman.’  
The girl looked calmly at him, then left the room.  
Jayne heard a lock snick shut.  
Hey,’ he yelled. ‘Hey! Come back here!’

￼

 

Supper had come and gone and Kaylee was worried.  
‘Ain’t like he got a curfew, mei mei,’ Mal said.’ He’ll be back with the sun, hungover and with that stupid rutted out grin.’  
‘I guess. But he knew David was making corn soup and he loves that.’  
‘He also loves chasin tail an he can’t get that on the boat. He had money in his pocket. He’s just found a gal who rents cheap.’  
Simon sighed. ‘I don’t think he took any preventatives from the infirmary. I’d better make sure I have Plan B-XY in stock.’  
‘He was just going to send his money to his Ma,’ Kaylee said.’He din’t say anything else.’  
‘So he decides to spend some of his own money on some creature comforts. Mei mei, you worry too much.’  
‘What if he got mugged for his cash?’  
’They ain’t many would take on a specimen like Jayne. Most’d be afraid he’d turn em upside daisy and shake em free of their ill-gottens.’  
Kaylee shook her head and told the children to get ready for bed.

At breakfast, Jayne still had not appeared. Kaylee was still worried and Zoe volunteered to retrace his steps.  
He was remember by the teller at the wave termini. ‘He needed a little help with the codes for Muir. He was sending money to Prospect Ridge there. Quite a large amount of scrip and coin,’ he grinned. ‘There was a little competition over who got to help him.’  
‘He say where he was going?’

‘No, he did ask where he could get a good beer. I sent him to the Hopvine,’ he smiled again.’That’s my local.’  
Zoe thanked him and headed out to the Hopvine. One of the waiters had served Jayne but had not noticed him leave.  
‘There was a girl at his table last time I saw him.’  
‘Figures. Did you know her?’  
‘This is a respectable…’ he quailed at Zoe’s look. ‘Okay we really don’t encourage the pros here. But she wasn’t anyone I recognized.’  
‘Can you describe her?’  
‘Not really. Youngish, under thirty anyway. Very thin. Fake hair, I think.’  
‘Did you hear them talking?’  
‘No. Yer man paid for his beer when I served. Like he was just havin one and then going on his merry, y’know?’

’So whatever he had in his pocket, it’s not like he was mugged for his Ma’s money,’ said Mal.  
‘Have we pinged his com?’ asked Emma.  
‘Mouths of babes. No we ain’t,’ said Mal, doing just that.

Jayne, still tied to the bed, was extremely uncomfortable. No one had returned to freed him and his bladder was desperate. He was also hungry and his arm, held above his head for hours, were painful.  
Then his comm pinged. He was sure only Serenity would be calling him. He sung his legs of the edge of the bed and haul himself upright, pulling the bedstead and mattress upright with him. His comm was in his pants pocket, just beyond his reach. He came the bed over and reached for his pants with his foot. The pinging stopped. Jayne swore. he manage with his foot to get the comm out of the pocket. He pressed the GPS button hoping the building was not location proofed.  
The crash of the bed falling over drew attention. The door swung open and two men looked in. They were dressed as salarymen but wore blue gloves.  
‘You can’t get free, ‘ the dark one said. ‘Tell us where River Tam is..’  
‘Don’t know any River Tam,’ Jayne said.  
The dark man stared at him. You do . You know her and you know her brother. You sold them once.’  
‘Oh yeah, them. That was long time ago. Don’t know where they are now.’  
‘You told Ms. Abrams that you knew them.’  
‘The girl? Hey buddy, I was just trying to get laid. You know, say anything to get em nekkid.’  
‘Ms. Abrams is not happy that you won’t tell her what you know.’  
‘Gimme a break, buddy. Was chasin some tail and end up tied to her bed. If it is hers. I gotta piss, I’m hungry and I am righteous pissed off.’  
The Blue Hands exchanged looks. The smaller man reach in his pocket and withdrew a small rod, but the dark one put out his hand and the rod went back.  
‘Think about River Tam,’ he said and they left the room.

Hey! I still gotta piss!” Jayne yelled after them.  
He considered his options. His hands were tied to the bedstead and both bed and mattress half covered him. He couldn’t reach his comm with his hands , could barely reach it with his toes. And his bladder was like to burst.  
Fuck it,’ he said. He wriggled to get into the best position with his piss-proud cock slightly out of his boxers and urinated on the floor. The stream ran away from him and from his pile of clothes across the slight angle of the floor and under the door. Jayne gave a sigh of relief. ‘Serves em right,’ he grunted. 

River spotted the GPS ping on the bridge where she was plotting routes, imaginary ones, to pass the time. The clamour of the dockyard was difficult to ignore, but it was a little quieter here. She had rarely been off the bridge since she and Kaylee had completed their selling trip around the city’s jewellers, making her own meals and allowing Simon’s meds to help her sleep away the stopover. 

‘Captain,’ she called over the PA.’Jayne is signalling , but no message.’  
‘What are you getting, Tross?’  
‘Just a GPS loc.’  
‘Good. Is it the jail?’  
‘No, the map street view shows a house.’  
‘Capital H?’  
‘Rose covered cottage, Captain Daddy.’  
Thanks , Riv. Keep watching that loc.’

The crew mustered in the galley. ‘If someone took Jayne they must have a power of muscle. Best we bring our own.’  
Kaylee was spelled off to watch the kids and keep Serenity secure. If necessary, Emma could take the ship into orbit.  
In her black catsuit, carrying a sword almost as long as she was, River looked glamorous and dangerous. He brother was armed only with a shotgun, but carried his red first responder bag. Everyone else was strapped. And wearing their new neographene vests. 

“Is there a plan, sir?’  
‘Get Jayne out. Preferably alive and without any wounded.’  
Zoe consulted her comm. ‘Ain’t too much to be seen on the street view. The property seems to go back to the next street. There’s a building there - a storage shed or garage or workshop?’  
“Okay. Simon and David, you go to the back. Zo, you and me we take the front. River, stay on the street and watch that no one comes out from a side entrance we can’t see.’  
‘We bustin in? Or knocking politely?’  
‘Don’t seem likely a polite enquiry would work. Sides I’m right out of my calling cards for the butler.’  
‘Bustin in it is , then.’  
The crew parked the hover mule a block from the cottage. River, Kaylee’s old striped parasol over her shoulder hiding her scabbard down her back, was sent to reconnoiter, circling the block.  
Mal and Zoe checked her captures. ‘Looks like the back building is a garage, boys. Can you slip around to it?’  
David studied River’s pictures.  
‘There’s a space between the building and the fence. Narrow, might be hard to leave in a a hurry. Passable though.’  
‘Go on round and slip into the yard. Let us know if you see any security.’  
The men walked briskly away. Mal gave them time to reach the back of the property, then he and Zoe strolled up to the front door, followed by River.  
Zoe’s mares leg blew the lock out of the front door.  
‘Huh, you’d think it would be steel not bamboo,’ remarked Mal , dashing inside.  
‘Jayne!’ he yelled and shot out a light fixture in the centre hall. ‘There was an answering yell from the back of the house.  
Zoe followed more cautiously, checking doors as she went. The house was very neat and clean, but there was a stink of urine that was out of place.  
Mal had reached the back door and opened it for Simon and David, who signalled all clear. He motioned them to stay put and turned back into the house.  
Zoe was opening a door, grimacing at the nasty smell. ‘Hey, Jayne,’ she said. ‘Got any clothes?’  
The reply was unintelligible but Zoe grinned. She signalled River, stationed at the demolished door and at Mal to hold and stepped into the room gingerly, knife at the ready. Deftly she cut Jayne’s bonds. ‘Wouldn’t’a thought this was your thing, Jayne,’ she remarked.  
There was more cursing as Jayne pulled his arms back to his sides. He gasped as he tried to shake some feeling into them. He was more successful in staggering to his feet.. ‘Cain’t do nuthin with my hands yet,’ he explained. Zoe bundled up his clothes, shoes, and weapons into his shirt and hung them from his arms with the sleeves as a handle.There were voices in the hallway.  
‘River, sister,’ cooed a young woman, slipping from a room Zoe was sure she had checked.  
River looked flatly at her.

￼

‘You’ve come home to us.’ the woman said.  
River looked confused, nervous.  
At the back of the house, Mal started forward, pistol in hand. The woman’s hand was suddenly pointed at him, gun cocked. Mal paused. From the kitchen just behind him, two men stepped forward. Each placed a blue hand on Mal’s shoulders.  
River gasped. ‘Two by two.’ she muttered.  
‘Hands of blue,’ agreed the woman. ‘They will take us home. You can be completed there, sister.’  
River stepped forward and with swift decision, pulled her sword and decapitated the woman.  
Mal lunged forward, freeing himself momentarily from the Blue Hands. As they reached for the small weapons in their pockets, he fired, hitting one man in the shoulder. The other had his weapon out, when Zoe’s bullet hit him between his eyes.  
Mal stepped over them can called out the back door. ‘Mule, boys!’ He turned back to Zoe. ‘Jayne able to walk?’ Zoe nodded.  
The four, Jayne stumbling a little, tore out of the cottage and piled into the mule. As they reached the corner and picked up Simon and David, the sound of sirens could be heard.  
‘Neighbours called in the law,’ said Jayne. ‘Wish they’d done it earlier.’  
‘We made a lot of noise,’ aid Zoe. ‘Probably broke a few bylaws about quiet enjoyment.’

 

￼

printout may 9/2015

 

INTO THE BLACK  
TO SUMMERFAIR OFF SHADOW

‘Emma prepare for immediate takeoff when we get on board!’  
‘I can do that, sir!’ come the tween’s light voice on Mal’s comm.  
‘Immediate?’ asked David.  
‘In case the cops are following us. And looks like our albatross needs the Black.’  
River was deathly pale. Her brother was stroking her clammy forehead. David was looking in his husband’s response kit for meds.  
‘It’s okay, baby boy. We’ll get her stabilized at home,’ Simon told him.

￼

Once aboard, Serenity lifted cleanly out of atmosphere under Emma’s control.  
‘Well done, nu er,’ Mal told her.’Smooth.’ Emma glowed at the compliment. ‘Put us into orbit around Eris Moon.’  
Emma hid Serenity in a geosychronous orbit behind Eris. Mal nodded approval. ‘Yer Wash’s daughter all right. Yer daddy couldn’t have done that better.’ Zoe entered and sat companionably in the co-pilot seat with her daughter.  
‘Kaylee want you to see to the little ones, sir. She wants to sit with River until she wakes.’

In the infirmary, David was applying antibiotic weaves to Jayne’s scraped wrists. River lay on the examination table, restraining belt lightly fastened. Her eyes were fixed and her fingers moved constantly. Simon was checking her vitals when Kaylee slipped up beside him.  
‘What’s happening, Si? She looks… scared.’  
‘We ran into another Academy graduate . And there were two men with blue gloves .Mal shot one and Zoe killed the other. The Academy girl; Mal says River took her out,’ he looked around.’ She was decapitated.’  
‘Sure did, ‘ put in Jayne, ’Quite the sight too. Two lil girlies talking quiet like then, Slash! Moonbrain’s sword come down and the other one is on the floor. Blood all over.’  
Simon and Kaylee looked sick. ‘Shut up , Jayne,’ said David.’ No need to be graphic.’  
‘Davy’s right,’ aid Mal entering the infirmary.’ If you’re fixed up, I want a talk with the men and Zoe in the commons. Kaylee, darlin, can you keep an eye on River?’

‘Boat’s on autopilot, and the kids is playing in the bay. Which is stark empty. Question is, how do we fill it?’  
‘After all this, my sister being attacked…’  
‘And me being kidnapped,’ added Jayne.  
‘And those blue gloved men, she was terrified of them. What’s going on?’  
‘That girl mentioned Jubal Early to me,’ offered Jayne.  
‘But there’s no bounty! I’ve been watching the Federal channels. No warrants even. No charges. Even Zoe is off their radar.’ said Simon.  
‘Doc’s right. I keep an eye on …. other waves. Ain’t nothin on any of us.’  
‘Other waves, Jayne?’ asked Mal.  
‘You watch them Brownout waves, Mal. I got my own interests.’  
‘Mmm. So mebbee they’s a bounty, mebbee it’s just that academy still wanting River back with their other…’  
‘Experiments.’ said Simon.  
‘An someone connected Jayne. Why?’  
‘Jayne was talking to weapons dealers moving the neographene.’  
‘Our buyer seemed pretty straight,’ said Zo.  
‘Mebbee, but he has staff. And other customers.’  
‘He never saw River though. Just me and Zoe.’ Jayne pointed out.  
‘Shit shit shit,’ said Mal.’ You were how the New Resistance found us, back when. Zoe is on record as a Dust Devil and an escaped prisoner.’  
‘And we gotta believe they know we have kids on board.’ added Zoe.  
‘So who are They?’ asked David.  
‘We don’t know. We didn’t know before when they attacked us back when Emma was a baby and Inara was alive.’  
‘Been more’n ten year since then.’  
‘Yeah, guess we’re still special.’  
David rose and put the kettle on. Mal shook his head.  
‘Meantimes, we got a fair bit of cash money and an empty cargo bay. And we want to get shut of Hera soonest.’  
‘Perse has two contacts for us back down planetside. We can pick up farm equipment for Summerfair at Utah City, half way round the world from Argo . And we can haul slurry in the same direction.’  
‘Slurry?’ asked Simon.  
‘Pulp for paper making. We don’t put it in the hold, we tow it.’  
‘Never heard of that before.’  
‘Not many worlds can make enough pulp for export, but Hera’s been using genetically cultured ryegrass and bamboo in terraforming the deadlands. Turned the cut crop under at first for compost, but they got enough slurry to make paper for the whole Murphy system now. They haul it up to orbit in moon shuttles then send it on when they have enough to make it worthwhile,’ explained Mal.  
Kayla looked worried, “Summerfair? That’s a moon off….’  
‘Off Shadow, yes,’ said Mal.

‘Are you sure about this contract,Mal?’ asked Simon. ‘with your history…’  
‘I ain’t going planetside. And our ranch wasn’t nowhere that’s liveable now anyways.’  
‘Still, that’s not the only contract. We can find another if you prefer to skip Summerfair.’  
Mal grunted. ‘It ain’t a problem, dong ma? We got buying customers and I got a freight contract that will fill the cargo bay. It’s not a problem.’

And Mal was if anything more outgoing on the week long voyage to Summerfair, the moon that had been the refuge for those who managed to escape the scorched earth destruction of Shadow. Today , nearly twenty years later, the Alliance was once again terraforming the planet using Summmerfair as a staging and supply platform. 

Summerfair was prospering. The agricultural economy was robust, and the farm equipment turned out to be a dozen tractors and two combine harvesters, along with accessories and optional equipment for specialized tasks. Mal spent some time with the operating manuals and catalogues for the machines, teased by Kaylee who told him that was her prerogative. 

The slurry was more difficult. River was still unable to work, and piloting was being done by Mal, who had never been particularly skilled at the task. Emma tried to cover on the fine work, but her inexperience told.  
Attaching five slurry bags, huge balloons bigger than the Firefly, took much longer than it should and Simon fretted about his sister’s safety every minute until  
Mal finally told him to get off the bridge and stay with River in her bunk until they were out of Hera’s gravity well. 

With both worlds in the Murphy protostar system, the actual trip would only be a few days even at this point in their orbits. 

River donned a suit and tethered herself to Serenity’s shell, slowly rebuilding herself in the silence of The Black.


End file.
